ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS

COMMUNITIES AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT

The Secretary of State was asked—

Non-Domestic Rate (Small Businesses)

Philip Hollobone: What assessment she has made of the effects of the transitional arrangements for the national non-domestic rate on small businesses in (a) London and (b) Northamptonshire in 2009-10.

Hazel Blears: No formal consideration is made of the effect of the transitional relief scheme in each financial year, but the Government are aware of the impact that large increases in business rate bills can have on all businesses when the transitional rate relief comes to an end. That is why we are allowing businesses to defer, over two years, 60 per cent. of the increase in their business rates bill for 2009-10 caused by the ending of transitional relief. That is in addition to allowing the deferral of 60 per cent. of the increase caused by the annual inflation adjustment.

Philip Hollobone: Will the Secretary of State confirm that the business rates deferral scheme will start to take effect from the end of July and will she give a commitment that the new costs incurred by local authorities in sending out the new bills will be fully funded by central Government?

Hazel Blears: Yes, I can confirm to the hon. Gentleman that he is correct on both counts.

Justine Greening: With 41 businesses now going insolvent every day, the decision by Ministers to withdraw transitional relief has been taken in a totally fact-free zone. No assessment was made of how withdrawing the relief in the first place would hurt businesses. Two months after the decision to introduce the business rate deferral scheme, Ministers have still not calculated the cost of the scheme to local authorities nor assessed its impact on businesses. Is the Secretary of State still going ahead with the next big challenge for businesses, the 2010 revaluation, and will that decision be taken in a fact-free zone too, with no account taken of the impact on businesses, communities and jobs?

Hazel Blears: The hon. Lady is in a knowledge-free zone. She has failed to acknowledge the tremendous help that the Government have given to businesses. The help includes the small business rate relief—nearly 400,000 businesses have taken advantage of the 50 per cent. relief, which was opposed by the Opposition—the deferral of 60 per cent. of the retail prices index increase, the deferral of 60 per cent. of the transitional element, and the deferral of tax and VAT for more than 100,000 businesses. That is what real help is, and I am afraid that the hon. Lady is not even on the playing field.

Regional Spatial Strategies

John Howell: What the timetable is for further reviews of regional spatial strategies.

Margaret Beckett: Regional spatial strategies have been published for all regions, with the exception of the south-west, where we expect to publish shortly, and the west midlands, which is currently holding an examination in public. All regional planning bodies have agreed timetables for further reviews, and I have put details in the Library.

John Howell: Will the Minister not admit that she has made a mistake and that instead of revising regional spatial strategies, she should be abolishing them and their unsustainable and undemocratic approach to the UK housing market?

Margaret Beckett: No, I think that would be a disastrous course of action. The Opposition have said a lot of sweeping things about there being no need for a regional tier of consideration or decision making, but one of the reasons this Government implemented such proposals is because of representations that we received from across the country, including from the business community in particular, about the gap that existed in our decision-making procedures when there was no regional tier.

Paddy Tipping: In the current economic climate, the aspiration to build 3 million new houses by 2020 looks ambitious. In the review of regional plans, will the Minister recognise the pent-up demand for housing that still exists and commit herself to development, in the east midlands and elsewhere, on brownfield sites rather than on greenfield sites?

Margaret Beckett: First, my hon. Friend is entirely right. I hope that everyone in the House recognises the tremendous pent-up demand that exists for new housing and the serious social and economic problems that would be caused if we could not do more to address it. I also entirely accept his other point, although he will know that this Government have a strong record of construction on brownfield sites. I accept completely that that is much the most desirable way, and we will continue to try to pursue it.

Alistair Burt: In the determination to move government closer to the people, what was the deciding factor in moving planning strategy from one unelected quango to another?

Margaret Beckett: If the hon. Gentleman is referring, as I think he is, to the proposals currently before the House, may I inform him that what we are basically trying to do is streamline and simplify the system? He will have many opportunities to make his contribution on those issues as the Bill proceeds through the House. However, I am sure that he will know that there is a strong element of participation by local authorities; perhaps I could therefore remind the Opposition, who sometimes seem to forget this, that the members of those authorities are elected.

David Kidney: Is it my right hon. Friend's intention that the spatial strategies will respect the Government's target for new house building on brownfield sites, as measured at the local government level, not the regional level?

Margaret Beckett: It is certainly our hope that people everywhere across the country will take account of that approach, which is obviously the most desirable from every point of view. My hon. Friend will appreciate that sometimes there are greater difficulties in finding suitable sites that meet those criteria, but the Government certainly retain that approach, and we will encourage local authorities to do so too.

Michael Fabricant: But why should anyone believe what the right hon. Lady says when she talks about building only on brownfield sites? She will know that many of the eco-towns proposed by her predecessor were going to be built on greenfield sites. Does she not accept that there needs to be a balance between the urgent need for extra housing and maintaining the rural environment?

Margaret Beckett: Of course I accept that; I do not think that anyone would dispute it. I simply say to the hon. Gentleman that the reason that people should believe what we say about brownfield sites is that the Government have delivered—in fact, more than delivered—on our targets for brownfield sites. We have had many discussions in the House about the proposals for eco-towns, and he is correct to say that some of those proposals involved greenfield development. They involve a variety of types of development, and we shall return to that issue later in the year.

Caroline Spelman: Yesterday, the Prime Minister admitted on Radio 4 that people felt powerless and that politics was not as accountable as it should be. Was there any point at which the right hon. Lady felt that he might have been referring to the unelected, unaccountable regional spatial strategies, which ride roughshod over local communities?

Margaret Beckett: That is certainly not the case. I am sure that is not what the Prime Minister meant, not least because—as I reminded the Opposition a moment ago—there will be very strong local authority involvement and representation in the new bodies that will consider the proposals. They are, as I have said, elected.

Caroline Spelman: But does the right hon. Lady not understand that local government involvement and participation is no good if it is overridden? Unelected regional bureaucrats arbitrarily doubling or trebling the number of homes that local authorities have offered to build on a sustainable basis gives people a feeling of being completely disempowered and confirms their sense that the only way to get a change in politics is to get a change of Government.

Margaret Beckett: I think that the hon. Lady is subtly trying to work round to the proposals that have been put forward by her party, in which, instead of having overall targets that recognise the substantial unmet housing demand identified a moment ago by my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Paddy Tipping), we should somehow let a thousand flowers bloom and thereby allow local authorities to build up to meet the housing need. I would simply say to her that I have read with great care the many comments on her party's proposals, and that I note with interest and some amusement that many official bodies have said, "What a fascinating idea. We look forward with great interest to hearing from the Conservative party how it can possibly deliver housing."

Housing Revenue Account

David Taylor: What recent representations she has received on the future of the housing revenue account subsidy system.

Margaret Beckett: Since the launch of the joint review of council housing finance with the Treasury in March 2008, we have received position papers from key organisations in the sector, approximately 45 written submissions in response to our call for evidence, papers from a number of housing experts and four petitions. We have also received direct representations in face-to-face meetings with housing representative bodies, local authorities and trade unions.

David Taylor: Despite our pledge to get councils building again, they are doing so at a rate of only about 200 homes a year, although registered social landlords are completing something like 20,000, suggesting a continuing bias against local authorities providing decent, affordable, accountable new homes for rent. Will my right hon. Friend grasp this once-in-a-generation opportunity to reform seriously flawed housing revenue accounts by announcing a self-financing system in which councils can keep their own rents, reinvest surpluses in existing and new stock and have the same freedom as housing associations to access grants and loans for much-needed new developments?

Margaret Beckett: I entirely share my hon. Friend's concern about the barriers that had been put in the way of local government's freedom to provide housing for its local communities by the Conservatives when they were last in government. I can assure him, however, that we are in the last stages of removing those barriers and that local authorities will be able to bid for grant. They will have the special opportunity that was made available to them in the Budget of accessing funds reserved for local authorities, but they will also have an opportunity to bid for social grant on the same basis as housing associations and other bodies.

Julia Goldsworthy: Back in January, the Prime Minister said that he would
	"put aside any of the barriers that stand in the way of"
	local authorities providing more housing. The right hon. Lady has mentioned the money announced in the Budget, but that equates to only three homes per authority. Is it not time to acknowledge that the real barrier is the housing revenue account subsidy? Why are the results of the review so overdue? In the current economic climate, surely what we need is swift action, rather than further delay.

Margaret Beckett: As I pointed out a moment ago to my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor), we are removing the last of the barriers that obstruct local authorities. I share what I deduce to be the hon. Lady's hope, which I hope in turn is shared across the House, that local authorities of every political shade will take advantage of this opportunity to begin greater construction. I also understand her point about the structure of the housing revenue account. The review has not, actually, been massively delayed—we had hoped that it would report in the spring, and we now hope that it will do so this summer—but I fully recognise that there are many criticisms of the present system and that they have a great deal of validity. While I very much hope that we will be able to come forward with radical proposals for change that will attract support across the parties, I am conscious of the unwarrantable precedent of the poll tax, whereby it was thought that anything would be better than the then system. Unless we can come up with anything better than the present system, we may have to tinker with that.

Brian Iddon: I am sure that my right hon. Friend will be aware of the uncertain feelings that managers of arm's length management organisations are experiencing at the moment. Since the stock is still owned by councils, will she please tell the House when it will be announced that those ALMOs are going to have a certain future ahead of them?

Margaret Beckett: I cannot put a date on the particular concerns that my hon. Friend raises and I recognise, of course, that there are, sadly, a plethora of uncertainties about some of these issues. We will certainly do our best to resolve them as speedily as possible, and if it is helpful, I will write to him if any further information becomes available.

Stewart Jackson: Last year, the Communities and Local Government Select Committee reported:
	"The national Housing Revenue Account system creates uncertainty and resentment and does not reward best practice."
	We are now 18 months into the Government's review of the HRA. When can we expect a conclusion to the review—one that is fair, that supports local autonomy and that will increase the provision of much-needed social housing across the whole country?

Margaret Beckett: It is not 18 months, but never mind. I told the House a few moments ago that we hope to publish some proposals this summer. I fully recognise the justified criticisms of the present system, particularly the volatility and the unfairness, but I view with slight cynicism some of the criticisms we have heard from some Conservative local authorities, which were perfectly happy with the surpluses built up—four and more times the size of last year's—when the Conservative Government were in power. We will put that aside and welcome their conversion to a better approach.

Houses in Multiple Occupation

Roberta Blackman-Woods: What progress her Department has made towards implementing those proposals it accepted from the ECOTEC report on houses in multiple occupation.

Iain Wright: Following on from the research work undertaken by ECOTEC, the Department published on 13 May a consultation paper on houses in multiple occupation and possible planning responses.

Roberta Blackman-Woods: I thank the Minister for that response and, indeed, for his interest in this subject. He will know that my constituents would like the local authority to have more tools to control the amount of private renting and HMOs in some areas. Will he tell us when proposals to license all private landlords and to alter use classes orders relating to HMOs will be put before the House?

Iain Wright: I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, who has done a great deal of work in this sector, not least in her role as chair of the all-party group on balanced and sustainable communities. She has really cajoled me and other Ministers in that respect. On her point about the powers available to local authorities, I have to say that she and her constituents are being badly let down by the City of Durham council, but I believe that the new unitary authority for Durham county will do an awful lot better. Powers are available in the Housing Act 2004 to enable local authorities to exercise control on the basis of evidence of antisocial behaviour. Our consultation on use classes orders and aligning housing and planning definitions of HMOs will end on 7 August. We look forward subsequently to consulting the House on that.

Business Rate Liabilities

Mark Harper: When she plans to bring forward legislation to give effect to the planned partial deferral of business rate liabilities in 2009-10.

John Healey: We are preparing the regulations now, we will introduce them as soon as possible and they will be in place and in effect by the end of July.

Mark Harper: Assuming that the regulations are introduced and pass into law before the summer recess, may I point out that all that they do is defer the payment? Will the Minister explain in a little more detail why he decided against supporting the Small Business Rate Relief (Automatic Payment) Bill, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Peter Luff), which would have enabled all eligible small businesses to halve their rate bills?

John Healey: We wanted to deal with a bigger problem. The retail prices index meant a 5 per cent. increase in the rates bills of every business, not just small businesses, and there was a particular problem for businesses that experienced the end of the transitional relief for this year. Given the current economic circumstances and the pressure that people are under, we wanted to help them to manage their cash flow and manage this increase by allowing them to pay a lower level of increase this year and spread the payments over the following two years. That is why we are introducing the regulations, and that is why they have been welcomed by business organisations.

Traveller Sites

John Baron: What assistance her Department will provide in identifying publicly owned land for use as a transit site by Traveller families facing eviction from the unauthorised site at Dale Farm.

Sadiq Khan: It is for Basildon council to manage the process of managing the unauthorised development at Dale Farm. If and when it decides to proceed with eviction action, I expect the council to hold talks with neighbouring authorities to ensure that any eviction that takes place does so in a calm and orderly fashion.

John Baron: The Minister will be aware that the 85 Traveller families at the illegal site have now exhausted their legal and planning options. The council rightly seeks to reclaim the unauthorised site and return it to the green belt. It hopes to avoid a forced eviction, as we all do: I know that the Minister does as well. The ball is now in the Travellers' court, and they have to move off peacefully if that is to happen. However, as the Minister will know, there is a shortage of sites.
	Given the scale of the problem and given that the Government are partly responsible for it, having granted the Travellers two years' leave to remain—during which time the number of caravans on the site shot up—will the Minister do what he can to help to identify transit sites outside the district, as Basildon has done more than its fair share locally? Will he also meet me to discuss this important issue?

Sadiq Khan: I understand the concern felt by the hon. Gentleman's constituents about the friction caused by the unauthorised development and the problems that it has caused for the settled community, but he was present during yesterday's debate, and will have heard Conservative Front Benchers criticise the Government for trying to work in partnership with local authorities and complaining about the fact that authorities are not given autonomy and power to solve problems.
	I told the hon. Gentleman a few moments ago that it was for Basildon council to work with neighbouring authorities. He is now telling me that he does not think it will be able to do so, and that he wants me to intervene and help. I am happy to meet him and discuss with him ways in which he feels that his local authority may need assistance, but it is worth my reminding him of the contradiction between what was said by his party's Front Benchers yesterday and what he is asking for today.

Julie Morgan: May I also ask my hon. Friend to do his utmost to find a solution to the situation at Dale Farm, and to do anything that the Government are able to do? As I am sure he knows, yesterday we launched Gypsy Roma Traveller History Month here in Parliament. It was a huge celebration of Gypsy culture, and hundreds of Gypsies, Roma people and Travellers were here. Overlying everything, however, was the worry about the lack of sites.

Sadiq Khan: My hon. Friend will be aware that one of the causes of the problems is the fact that large numbers of Traveller and Gypsy families are on unauthorised encampments and sites. We need to encourage local authorities to provide more and more authorised sites. There are pitches where Traveller and Gypsy families can go, which will lead to fewer of the problems described by the hon. Member for Billericay (Mr. Baron).

James Gray: I am puzzled by the Minister's response to my hon. Friend the Member for Billericay (Mr. Baron) that the problem at Dale Farm could be solved by Basildon borough council. In relation to the problem in Wiltshire, he has said that not the elected Wiltshire county council but an entirely unelected, undemocratic quango, the South West regional assembly, must make the necessary decision. How do those two answers stack up?

Sadiq Khan: I am always happy to lecture Opposition Members about the planning framework. The hon. Gentleman will be aware that local authorities assess Gypsy and Traveller accommodation needs, and that the results of those assessments are passed to a regional planning body which uses them to allocate pitches to authorities as part of the regional spatial strategy. The proposals are assessed during a public examination at which arguments can be advanced for raising or lowering the number of allocations. It is then for local authorities to draw up development plan documents to accommodate pitch allocations. I shall be happy to meet the hon. Gentleman to explain how the planning framework operates.

Jim Sheridan: Unauthorised sites such as Dale Farm exist the length and breadth of the country. What measures are in place to assist local authorities, as it is they—and therefore taxpayers—who have to pick up the cost of clearing up the damage done to sites? What tangible legislative powers does my hon. Friend have to sort this out?

Sadiq Khan: My hon. Friend asks a very important question. Last year, local authorities spent £18 million on enforcement action. There is a local authority in England which has authorised sites, and the cost of enforcement fell from £200,000 a year to £5,000. That is an example of authorised sites reducing the cost to local authorities, and also the huge distress caused to the settled community.

Mortgage Assistance Schemes

Philip Davies: How many households have received assistance under the mortgage rescue scheme and homeowner mortgage support scheme.

Margaret Beckett: Our objective is to ensure that repossession is always the last resort. The mortgage rescue scheme and homeowner mortgage support scheme are just part of a comprehensive package of measures that we have put in place to assist families at risk of losing their homes. The MRS has been operational across the country since 1 January 2009. Since its launch, local authorities have reported that more than 1,000 households each month have come forward and received guidance on what support may be best for their circumstances. Seventy-seven households are in the final stages of receiving assistance and have had repossession action against them frozen by their lenders. Two households have so far completed the Government mortgage-to-rent process, whereby a registered social landlord has agreed to purchase their property and enabled them to remain in their own home as tenants. We expect many more households to be helped in this way in the coming months.
	The homeowner mortgage support scheme opened with the first group of lenders on 21 April. Official figures on the number of households entering the scheme will be published later this year, and we are working closely with lenders and money advisers to monitor progress and ensure that the scheme is working effectively.

Philip Davies: Well, there we have it. Since the Chancellor announced this scheme, a house has been repossessed every seven minutes, yet the scheme has helped only two families since it was launched. Is this not another example of the Government seeking publicity—in a blaze of glory—to pretend they are helping people when in reality they are failing to deliver any tangible help to people suffering hardship through no fault of their own?

Margaret Beckett: As I have just pointed out, thousands of households have approached the relevant authorities to seek advice. [Hon. Members: "Two."] Only two have completed the full process. I also pointed out that more than 70 households—77 to be precise—are now well on the way to receiving a formal offer, and I can also tell the House that a further 10, making 87 in all— [Interruption.] I am glad that Opposition Members find this so amusing; 87 households in all are now in the final stages of having a formal offer of assistance. That is 87 more households than received any help whatever under the Conservatives when they were last in government and when repossessions were taking place. They did not lift a finger. I am glad that they think it is funny that people are at risk of losing their homes, but I do not.

Phyllis Starkey: Does the Minister agree that if Opposition Members were to consult the transcript of the proceedings of yesterday's Select Committee on Communities and Local Government and read the remarks of the Council of Mortgage Lenders on this scheme, they would, perhaps, moderate their mirth? The CML is broadly supportive of these two schemes, and it pointed out that the MRS had been extremely helpful in making sure that many more people at risk of repossession were now approaching their lenders at the outset and getting decent advice, instead of burying their head in the sand and waiting for things to hit them. That might be one of the reasons why relatively few of them are going through this entire system and requiring the MRS; instead, they are coming to an agreement with their lenders early on. If the demand is in fact lower than envisaged, will the Minister consider sending the money through for the building of more homes, instead of leaving it in a scheme that might not be required to the level that was originally thought?

Margaret Beckett: My hon. Friend is entirely right, and I agree that it would be wise for the Opposition to look carefully at the evidence that has been given to the Select Committee that she chairs. Opposition Members are so busy trying to be clever about this issue that they completely overlook the fact that, for everybody who is being considered for schemes of this kind, there is forbearance of action that could otherwise be taken against them that could lead to their homes being repossessed. One of the reasons we took the step of making the announcements that we did earlier in the year, which has been much criticised since by the Conservative party, was precisely to encourage people to go to their lenders and get advice at the earliest possible stage, instead of burying their heads in the sand. It is very clear from all the professional evidence that people believe that that has had a substantial effect.
	The second effect that we hoped to achieve, which, again, seems perhaps to have come to fruition, was to get lenders to think more carefully about whether taking such as approach is worth their while—the suggestion is that repossessing a home costs a lender, on average, about £37,000. One of our chief aims was to convince lenders to consider the fact that for a lesser expenditure they might save all that misery and disruption to so many families. I am frankly appalled by the frivolous attitude of the Conservative party—I mean that quite sincerely, Mr. Speaker. It is a shattering blow to people when they lose their home—it is much harder than losing one's job and much harder to recover from.
	On the mortgage rescue scheme, it appears that what is happening is that those who are coming through to the end of the scheme—I appreciate that the numbers are comparatively small on the official statistics—are agreeing to forgo their home ownership in order to stay on as tenants. That, in itself, is a major decision, so we should not be surprised that people are taking time to arrive at it.

Sarah Teather: The Minister will be aware that 75,000 families are expected to face the misery of repossession that she spoke about. Even if we were to add in all the package of measures to which she referred, tens of thousands of families would still be left facing that misery. Why then has she been unwilling to reform mortgage law—Shelter has consistently argued for this—so that we can give the courts the power to intervene? That would give the Government's pre-action protocol some decent teeth. Why is she unwilling to do that?

Margaret Beckett: I simply say to the hon. Lady that we believe that the pre-action protocol has been really quite effective. I appreciate the point she makes, which is that, sadly, many people could still lose their homes, but she may be aware that even in the best of years over the past decade or so—it was in 2004, as I recall—some 8,000 families lost their homes. There are a variety of reasons why people may find themselves in those devastating circumstances. She referred to the forecast of some 75,000 expected repossessions this year. That forecast came from the Council of Mortgage Lenders, but it has recently said that it now believes that, as a result of the action that this Government have taken, it has been too pessimistic. We certainly all hope that that is the case.

Dari Taylor: To what extent have the banks, building societies and other lenders enthusiastically joined this rescue scheme?

Margaret Beckett: I cannot honestly say that everybody was enthusiastic, but the most important thing is that they have been willing to join. As my hon. Friend may know, 50 per cent. of the lenders in the marketplace have joined the home owners mortgage support scheme and taken advantage—or they could take advantage—of the Government's underlying guarantee. Although some major lenders did not feel that they needed to use that guarantee, 80 per cent. of mortgage lenders are, in fact, offering comparable schemes.

George Young: Does the right hon. Lady agree that although these two schemes are both welcome, the process can be slow and bureaucratic? Will she undertake a review to see whether it might be streamlined?

Margaret Beckett: We are indeed keeping the schemes under review. The right hon. Gentleman may know that in the Budget we brought forward some extra funding, because early experience of the mortgage rescue scheme suggested that there was a greater problem with negative equity than had been anticipated. So, we have already made that change to the scheme and put forward the funding that will enable us to cover that. We are continuing to monitor how the schemes are developing because, obviously, as I said at the outset, our goal is to be as effective as possible in preventing repossessions, by whatever means.

Bob Neill: Does the right hon. Lady understand that there is no amusement on this side of the House at the Government's situation, but there is a great deal of anger at their unwillingness to recognise the failure of these programmes, however well intended they might be, to deliver in practice? She neglected to tell the House that, of the 1,000 a month who register and express an interest in the mortgage rescue scheme, more than half are told that they do not qualify on the Government's own criteria. She neglected to say that on the current rate of progress the 6,000 who are supposed to be helped over the course of the scheme would, in fact, total about 12.
	The Minister refers to the home owner mortgage support scheme. Would it not have been better if she had owned up to the fact that the 50 per cent. of mortgage lenders coming forward is fewer than the 70 per cent. that she said would come forward when the scheme was first trailed? Will she explain why major players such as Santander, Barclays, HSBC and Nationwide have all ruled out participation in the scheme? There is nothing amusing about this: indeed, the Government's failure is tragic, if not scandalous.

Margaret Beckett: The hon. Gentleman accuses me of misunderstanding the Opposition's approach. I admit that I was guilty of thinking that people who were roaring with laughter were finding something amusing.
	What the hon. Gentleman says is straightforward nonsense, as he should be aware. He talks about a failure to deliver in practice and about the criteria for the scheme. If he has been paying any real attention to the schemes, he will know that the mortgage rescue scheme was only ever intended for some 6,000 families, and was geared towards the most vulnerable households who would be legally entitled to be rehoused by their local authority. That was all announced at the time. It was precisely because that scheme was funded only to deal with a small number of households that the Government then introduced the home owners mortgage support scheme, which is designed to deal with a much larger number—potentially tens of thousands—of households. All the strictures that the hon. Gentleman has levelled against the mortgage rescue scheme are therefore misplaced.
	The hon. Gentleman suggests that Barclays, Nationwide and Santander are not participating, but he is wrong. They are offering comparable schemes and therefore have said that they do not see the necessity for the underpinning Government guarantee, and that is why they have not entered the guarantee scheme. They are certainly offering similar schemes, alongside our scheme, which they would not be offering were it not for the fact that this Government have urged them to enter our scheme. They do not need the support and that is why they have not come into that aspect of the scheme.

Home Information Packs

James Duddridge: What her latest assessment is of the effect of home information packs on the housing market; and if she will make a statement.

Iain Wright: Independent research into the impact of home information packs was undertaken by Europe Economics. The implementation of HIPs is being kept under review and an evaluation of the HIPs programme is currently planned for 2010 by updating "The HIPs Baseline Research Report".

James Duddridge: In another survey, 89 per cent. of professionals said that HIPs would not benefit buyers. In the age of rhetoric and of trusting professionals, why should we believe what the Government say, not the professionals?

Iain Wright: I dispute what the hon. Gentleman says. Professionals are telling us that information is vital, and giving buyers information about probably the biggest purchase in their lives benefits the whole home buying and selling process. Roger Wilson of Connells, one of the country's largest estate agents, has said:
	"Knowledge is key when it comes to building confidence for any big purchase and prospective home buyers need to do their research and gather as much information as possible. The new PIQ, EPC and other elements of the Home Information Pack mean buyers will have more information about a home from the very first day it goes on the market."
	Professionals are actually welcoming the HIP.

Andrew Miller: Professionals such as LMS in my constituency are proud of the work that they do in providing HIPs to many people. Will my hon. Friend take this opportunity to say how he intends to continue his drive, after the review, to relieve the downward pressure on conveyancing by moving towards a system of electronic conveyancing?

Iain Wright: My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. Electronic conveyancing can speed up the process hugely. We remain committed to ensuring that we can simplify and streamline the home buying and selling process. Some £1 million a week is wasted in abortive home purchases and sales, and that can cause heartache to the people involved and disruption to the economy, so we remain committed to HIPs. We want to provide information up front to allow buyers to make an informed choice.

Angela Watkinson: Further to the Minister's response to my hon. Friend the Member for Rochford and Southend, East (James Duddridge), will he guarantee that the review will include consultation with estate agents up and down the country to assess the level of demand from house buyers for home information packs and to assess the number of packs that have been produced but never used, and the cost involved? If the demand is extremely low, as I predict it will be, will he at least make them voluntary and not a statutory requirement?

Iain Wright: No, we have no plans to make them a voluntary requirement. The hon. Lady touches on an important point. Sometimes, buyers and sellers—particularly buyers—do not get to see the HIP. That is not in anybody's interests. One key idea that we are trying to push forward, along with the industry, is that estate agents and others involved in the home buying and selling process should ensure that home buyers see the HIP. As I said in a previous answer, information is key. This is the biggest purchase that someone will make and it is important that home buyers get to see the home information pack and make informed choices accordingly.

Social Housing

Christine Russell: What plans the Homes and Communities Agency has to increase the supply of social housing; and if she will make a statement.

Margaret Beckett: We have announced a series of measures over the past 12 months designed to improve delivery of social rented housing in the current difficult market conditions, including a £1 billion housing package in the Budget, focused on maintaining activity and jobs, and further help for those who need it in the short term. We remain committed to the delivery of affordable housing for social rent and low-cost home ownership and we are assessing delivery and targets with the HCA as part of its corporate plan process.

Christine Russell: I thank my right hon. Friend for that reply. In my constituency, there are 26 applicants for every social housing vacancy. The Homes and Communities Agency has made a good start in giving £12 million to the Chester and district housing trust to build 350 homes, but 3,500 homes are needed. What more can she and the agency do to put pressure on the banks and building societies to make borrowing affordable for housing associations?

Margaret Beckett: My hon. Friend makes a very important point. Perhaps I can direct her to the evidence given yesterday to the Select Committee, which will be published. Questions were asked about housing associations' capacity to raise funding. Although there is general recognition of their concerns about the loans that lenders are making available, it appears that the situation is easing to some degree. I share her anxieties and can assure her that we keep this matter under review.

Andrew Robathan: The Minister's hon. Friend, the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Wright), recently gave an interview to that excellent newspaper the  Leicester Mercury, in which he commented on social housing, in particular with regard to Pembury and the proposed eco-town. Is he aware that, with or without social housing, local feeling is entirely opposed to the proposal to build a huge town on a greenfield site? Frankly, I wish that the Government would stop backing that plan and that Ministers would stop interfering in Leicestershire's affairs.

Margaret Beckett: Yes, I am aware of that, as I see people waving placards and shouting on regional television. I say to the hon. Gentleman that I hope that this summer we will have some news for his constituents and others about progress in this matter.

Jeremy Corbyn: Will the Minister do her best to ensure that the agency secures rapid delivery of affordable socially rented homes, to get people out of private rented accommodation where landlords are making a killing at the public expense through the housing benefits system? Will she also ensure that houses that are built or bought are appropriate, particularly for two very needy groups—large families and single people, who often do not get any social housing options whatsoever?

Margaret Beckett: I can certainly tell my hon. Friend that I know that the HCA shares the concerns that he has expressed, as do the Government. The agency met its targets last year, even in the present difficult economic circumstances, and will be using the funding put forward in the Budget to the best possible effect to build more housing, which is much needed, as fast as possible.

Decent Homes Programme

Ken Purchase: How much expenditure her Department has incurred on its decent homes programme since 1997.

Iain Wright: Between 1997-98 and 2008-09, the overall capital sum provided by the Department for Communities and Local Government and its predecessor Departments for capital investment in council-owned housing stock was £25.8 billion.

Ken Purchase: I thank the Minister for that reply, but does he not agree with me and many others in this place and elsewhere who say that if the fourth option had been agreed to, the sum would have been spent more efficiently, effectively and quickly, and to the greater benefit of our tenants and certainly taxpayers, who, of course, ultimately own the housing stock?

Iain Wright: But I am sure that my hon. Friend would agree with me that when we came to power in 1997, there was a backlog of about £19 billion in council house maintenance and repairs. We have had to do something about that. One of the true successes of this Government has been the massive investment in a whole generation of social housing. He is right to say that local authorities have a key role to play, and not only in providing the broad strategic assessment of what housing is needed in their area; they have a direct delivery role. In answers to previous questions, my right hon. Friend the Minister for Housing has said that we are removing disincentives for local authorities, providing additional money in the Budget and elsewhere, and making sure that councils start building council houses again.

Karen Buck: The decent homes initiative has transformed social housing in my constituency, but my hon. Friend is aware that the losers among residents are leaseholders who have bought properties that are now subject to major works bills, in some cases of £60,000—works that, in many cases, the leaseholders are totally unable to pay for. Will my hon. Friend assure me that he is, once again, urgently reviewing whether special, targeted help can be given to leaseholders who have, through no fault of their own, ended up owing bills of tens of thousands of pounds?

Iain Wright: I am very sympathetic with regard to the scenario that my hon. Friend sets out. She has played a wonderful role in hassling me to death, frankly, on the issue—and she was right to do so. It is important to ensure that we provide targeted help. There is a range of powers in place. The Housing and Regeneration Act 2008 provided interest-free loans and deferred payments for leaseholders in the situation that she describes, but I am continuing to look at the issue, and I will keep her informed.

Topical Questions

Louise Ellman: If she will make a statement on her departmental responsibilities.

Hazel Blears: My Department continues to work to devolve power to councils, communities and citizens; to build strong, cohesive communities; to build new homes where people want to live and bring up their families; and to prevent violent extremism.

Louise Ellman: I applaud my right hon. Friend's strong stand against extremism. Does she share my concern about the fact that al-Muhajiroun has regrouped under different names, and about the fact that on 1 March this year, Islam for the UK held an event at a Harrow primary school that featured a live link with the banished Omar Bakri Muhammad? What assurances can she give me that public facilities will not be used to promote extremism in such a way in the future?

Hazel Blears: I entirely share my hon. Friend's concern about the activities of extremist groups. I am aware of a number of groups that have used council premises in places including Ealing and Tower Hamlets. Some of the councils concerned have very courageously taken steps to ensure that those groups are banned from their premises on the ground that their activities seek to divide communities. I can also confirm to my hon. Friend that my Department is in contact with those local authorities to support them in making the right decisions to bring our communities together, and not to divide them with the views of extremists.

Richard Ottaway: May I raise with the Secretary of State an issue that I have raised before—the recognition of pigeon racing as a sport? Of course, the significance as far as her Department is concerned, is that if it is not a sport, pigeon-racing premises have to pay business rates. She may not be aware that the application of the Royal Pigeon Racing Association for pigeon racing to become a sport has been rejected by Sport England. Will she, on behalf of the pigeon fanciers of Croydon and Salford, join me in supporting an appeal, so that our pigeon fanciers can get the deal that they deserve?

Hazel Blears: As I remember, the last time the hon. Gentleman raised the issue he had a particular fanciable pigeon in mind; I have forgotten its name. I can say to him that I did personally take up the issue and found out why pigeon racing was not defined as a sport. Apparently it is because the owners do not take part in any physical activity.  [Laughter.] If they ran behind the pigeons, it could be a sport. In terms of empowering the pigeon fanciers, perhaps I can suggest to him that they might like to draw up a petition, so that we can see whether we can take action on the issue.

Liz Blackman: What progress has Derbyshire county council made in meeting its local area agreement targets in the light of the credit crunch?

John Healey: We undertook a first annual review through the Government office in January, and Derbyshire is making good progress in meeting the priorities that it set itself. The first full independent assessment will be carried out in Derbyshire, as elsewhere, in November. Derbyshire has set itself five important economic priorities, on which it is working and making progress. It has also led a response locally, which is very impressive, helping to make sure that businesses receive the business relief that they deserve; that welfare claimants receive the benefits that they need; that buy-in from the council comes from local firms; and that invoices are paid promptly. It is a council with a proud, successful record over the past four years, and I hope that it will be judged as such by the electorate on Thursday. It certainly deserves to be back as a Labour authority after Thursday.

Michael Fabricant: The Campaign to Protect Rural England says that while it recognises
	"the need for more homes we do not believe the aspiration for 240,000 new homes a year is either achievable or desirable".
	I agree. If I may return to the question that I asked earlier, how are we going to balance 240,000 new homes, 8,000 of which will be in Lichfield district, against the need to maintain the quality of life in rural areas? I do not think that that is a conundrum that can be solved.

Margaret Beckett: I have great respect for the CPRE, but in this regard its views are profoundly misconceived. It is all very well to say that it is not going to be easy—I accept that completely—to maintain the balance with quality of life, which the hon. Gentleman mentioned. However, if we ignore the number of households who need to be housed, and assume that because the CPRE thinks so, it is not desirable to build them homes, that will certainly damage people's quality of life, especially among the many thousands of families who will be without homes.

David Kidney: With the construction industry still severely depressed because of the recession, what is the Department doing to try to make sure that there is work for construction workers, especially in new house building, and with particular reference to the west midlands?

Margaret Beckett: My hon. Friend will know, I hope, that we have initially purchased substantial numbers of unsold homes; in fact, we have mopped up a large amount of stock. He will also know that in the Budget proposals, provision was made to kick-start schemes that are frozen. Every scheme that is being considered will be assessed to see whether housing can be made a priority, and that will very much be part of the key judgment that is made. That is true in the west midlands and across the country.

Daniel Rogerson: I was interested to hear the answer given by the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Wright), to the question on planning powers and the interaction with houses in multiple occupation. An issue that I have raised several times with the ministerial team, as have my hon. Friends, is the classification of second homes and whether there is some way of looking at planning and change of use classes orders to deal with the problem. My hon. Friend the Member for Truro and St. Austell (Matthew Taylor) raised that possibility in the report that he provided for the Government, in line with previous reports that the Government have received from, among others, Elinor Goodman. Is there anything that they have drawn on in those reports in order to look at the issue of second homes?

Iain Wright: I am afraid that I have to tell the hon. Gentleman that there are currently no plans to require that people receive planning permission to have a second home. We would find that difficult within the planning regime. Planning legislation and the planning framework are based on land use, and if someone lives in a house, the position is similar to that for someone living in a second home, as it were. Nevertheless, councils have considerable powers regarding council tax discounts to provide resources that can be put into the community to help combat the problems experienced in large areas of the country where there are second homes.

Natascha Engel: As my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary knows, I have about 10 park homes in my constituency. Some of them are well run and managed, but the vast majority are not. What can he do to ensure that local authorities are given far greater powers to enforce park home licences?

Iain Wright: I have spoken privately with my hon. Friend about that. I know that she plays a leading role in her area in bringing together various agencies to help enforcement. We have put in place a number of powers to help enforcement. The key factor is local authorities, the police and other agencies using those powers. Directly after oral questions today, I have a meeting with my hon. Friend the Minister for Security, Counter-Terrorism, Crime and Policing to discuss how local authorities and police can work effectively together. My hon. Friend the Member for North-East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) will be aware that on 12 May we published a consultation paper, "Improving the Management of Park Home Sites", which proposes the introduction of an improved park home site licensing system. In particular, that will require site owners to be fit and proper people to hold a site licence. We believe that that will drive up management standards. The consultation closes on 4 August, and I encourage my hon. Friend and others to get involved in it.

Andrew Robathan: May I take the Ministers back to the subject of eco-towns, particularly that proposed for Leicestershire in Pembury, which is causing tremendous upset to the people of Leicestershire? There is no demand for it among the people of Leicestershire. Yes, there is a demand for social housing, but what about using brownfield sites? There is a real feeling that the fact that the Co-op is leading the charge for this eco-town may be a conflict of interest between Labour and the co-operative society.

Margaret Beckett: I was about to congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his ingenuity in managing to raise the issue twice, having already worked it into one question to which it was wholly unrelated, although this time, of course, he can raise any topic he chooses. I say to him what I said to him a moment or two ago. We will, I trust, be able to come forward in the not-too-distant future with the results of our consultation and discussion on the set of proposals about eco-towns, and no doubt he and his constituents will have things to say then.

Dari Taylor: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State recently visited my constituency and the small town of Thornaby, which has been regenerated. Will she join me in complimenting the developers, Thornfield, and Stockton borough council for delivering an excellent scheme? Will she also acknowledge that it is not just a matter of the physical environment, as when such improvements are made, people's confidence rises and their keenness to be much more involved in the governance of their town becomes much more evident?

Hazel Blears: My hon. Friendis, as ever, a champion for her community. She will know that I have visited Thornaby probably half a dozen times over the past 10 or 12 years, and I have seen the dramatic transformation that there has been in that community, which has suffered from a range of deprivation. The shopping centre that has been developed is a marvellous, light, airy, attractive place that will bring people to businesses in that community. The hairdressers in my hon. Friend's shopping centre did an excellent job, and I was delighted to be able to pay a visit there on my most recent visit.

John Redwood: When local councils are under pressure to identify land for house building under Government targets, can they now adjust the targets downwards to allow for the fact that the actual building rates have fallen dramatically owing to the credit crunch and recession?

Margaret Beckett: Of course we are looking at housing delivery, but we are also very conscious of housing need, which has been mentioned a number of times during this Question Time and which is not going away.

Lynda Waltho: I know that my right hon. Friend is aware of the great need for regeneration in Stourbridge, and of the series of public meetings that I have recently conducted with business and local people on that topic and on the recession. At our last meeting, people were greatly excited by the announcement of a fund for temporary use of empty shops. Can she elaborate on that, and tell me how we can access that funding in Stourbridge?

Hazel Blears: I have had the pleasure of visiting Stourbridge with my hon. Friend. She, too, is a champion for her area. We hope to ensure that the £3 million town centres fund is up and running very shortly, and to get the money out so that we can provide support, particularly for local authorities to cover the temporary costs of using those empty premises for something worth while, whether for arts activities or cultural activities, as a drop-in centre for the police service, or for a rehearsal space for young people in bands—a range of activities which, just as in Thornaby, can help to draw people to the town centre. If we get people in, shopping and spending their money, that will help the businesses enormously in my hon. Friend's area. I will ensure that she gets the details as a matter of priority for her community.

Karen Buck: Have Ministers had the opportunity to study the recent report by the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux on the dodgy practices of the more unscrupulous letting agencies? I welcome the direction of travel in the Green Paper on the private rented sector, but will the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Wright), assure me that during the consultation he will look at whether the Government can take action to control excessive charging and poor service by some of those agencies that, frankly, rip off people who go into private sector tenancies?

Iain Wright: My hon. Friend is absolutely right about that. She will be aware of the private rented sector review that we commissioned from Julie Rugg and David Rhodes of the university of York, and we announced our response to the Rugg review on 13 May. One key element of our proposals is mandatory legislation on letting agents. We think that it will be an important step in improving the quality of letting agents—both for good landlords and good tenants.

Rosie Cooper: West Lancashire borough council tells me that if it were to reduce total rents by using the figure of 3.1 per cent., the formula would unfortunately have a perverse consequence when applied to the area. The council would have to reduce services by £67,000, and would risk a potential £500,000 problem on the housing revenue account. Will the Minister look at how those perverse consequences play out when applied to West Lancashire?

Margaret Beckett: Certainly I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. I know that she has been anxious and extremely active on behalf of her constituency and local authority. We believe that there is actually some misunderstanding on the part of the authority about the implications of the change for it, but my officials are, I think, meeting representatives of her local authority this week, and we will work carefully through the detailed implications. I can certainly assure her and other Members that it is no part of our intention that any local authority will be disadvantaged by making the change.

Mary Creagh: I congratulate the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Wright), from the bottom of my heart on the changes that he has announced to the building regulation part G in order to reduce bathwater scalds in the home. I pay tribute to him on behalf of the Children's Fire and Burn Trust, the Child Accident Prevention Trust and the British Burn Association, and the plastic surgeons and the anaesthetists who deal with some of the 600 individuals who suffer severe bathwater scalds each year. They say that because of my hon. Friend's decision, a lot of people will be saved a lot of pain and suffering in the years to come.

Iain Wright: I thank my hon. Friend for those kind words, but I must say that through her leadership of the "Hot Water Burns Like Fire" campaign and her enormously positive work with my officials to provide the evidence to push forward the impact assessment that allowed us to make those changes, she has been at the very heart of the work to ensure that vulnerable people, such as young children and older people, can be safe in their baths. It is thanks to her hard work that we have been able to change the building regulations.

Point of Order

Derek Twigg: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. We are due to meet the Secretary of State for Health next week to discuss the national burn care review in the north-west, which has examined a number of centres in Manchester and Liverpool. However, we found out today that the strategic health authority review group is about to issue a press release and make its recommendations public. How can that happen when we, as Members, are due to meet the Secretary of State next week so that he can hear our views? It pre-empts parliamentary rules and our position as MPs.

Mr. Speaker: I can understand the hon. Gentleman's concern, but he might know that that is not a matter for me.

Bailiffs (Repeals and Amendment)

Motion for leave to introduce a Bill (Standing Order No. 23)

Karen Buck: I beg to move,
	That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make requirements in respect of the use of force and forcible entry by bailiffs; to make provision for the reference to court of certain cases involving vulnerable clients; and for connected purposes.
	The recession of the past 18 months has painfully demonstrated the precariousness of many people's financial situation. Debt and debt recovery action have become a reality for ever larger numbers of people, and the arrival of a bailiff is, for many of those people, the ultimate trauma and humiliation. Indeed, we know of cases in which people have had heart attacks when the bailiffs have arrived. The mental and physical stress that people undergo is one of the worst things that will ever happen to them in their life.
	Of course, bailiffs and debt recovery mechanisms have to be used. There are always people who abuse trust, neglect their finances and refuse to engage with their creditors, and, ultimately, they must pay an appropriate price. Indeed, in my constituency role, some examples have been brought to my attention whereby bailiffs have intervened with their clients and been helpful in the extreme. They have been informative and sympathetic, and they have helped people with their predicament. Yet the truth is that many of those subject to such enforcement action are desperate and vulnerable people, and many are also victims of error. For them, even the actions of bailiffs who behave entirely reasonably—and they do not always do that—are disproportionate and excessive.
	As I do more and more work with constituents who owe money and I learn more about the process of debt recovery and the enforcement of fines, it has become clear to me that we have got the balance wrong, and that we need to review urgently the position that we are in. We must certainly not, in any circumstances, think of escalating the powers available to bailiffs, and the Government should rethink their approach to regulation.
	The bailiff at the door has been an image in literature for many years; it was a common motif in Dickens novels—but it is not a rare visitation on the feckless and the spendthrift, but an occurrence of staggering frequency. In my local authority alone, and in respect of just one debt—arrears of council tax—more than 13,000 cases ended up in the hands of bailiffs over a three-year period. The council has stated that 9 per cent. of council tax accounts—almost one in 10—end up in enforcement action. That is a staggering proportion.
	What does it mean to be on the receiving end of such action? It means fear and trauma for people, particularly children. I have heard of moving cases in which children have refused to leave the house or have insisted on having the lights out at home because they are so frightened of a bailiff coming and seizing their television or computer. Being on the receiving end also means an escalation of the original debt, which simply compounds the problems that caused the financial crisis in the first place. Only last week I had to intervene in the case of a single parent with three children, one of whom is disabled. Her parking fine, about which I was making representations, had escalated from an original £60 to £700 by the time the bailiffs arrived.
	Another constituent wrote to tell me that she had two sets of bailiffs chasing the same debt. Payments had been made to and acknowledged by the council, but did not then appear on the system. She wrote:
	"This has left me in a desperate state—each party refers me to the other, the fees are ever increasing and two companies are threatening the removal of goods for the same amount."
	Some people are the victims of mistaken identity, while others are the victims of identity fraud. I have had cases in which action has been taken against one person because of another person's criminality. The point is that there is a lack of proportionality in the response, given the likelihood of those at the receiving end being vulnerable, or victims of mistaken identity.
	The representations that I seek to make to Ministers through the Bill are threefold. The power of forcible entry into a person's home and the power for bailiffs even to use force against debtors are far too extreme to be given to civilian enforcement officers. The balance has been tilted too far against the householder's right to be secure from trespass into their home. The present position overturns a long-standing common law tradition, by which a bailiff peacefully entering a property could not be prevented from going about his or her task. The emphasis was very much on an acceptance of that right in certain cases, but obviously the tradition stopped short of forcible entry.
	The powers taken by the Government in the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007 have not been brought into effect by regulation, and we await the regulations that will implement them. However, I believe that it is now clear that such powers should be repealed. Their excessive harshness should not be left on the statute book, even with an indication that the Government do not intend to implement them at present. The powers should be removed entirely.
	Of course, the power to enter domestic premises forcibly to enforce the collection of criminal fines is already legal, and that too is creating appalling distress for many vulnerable households. Many of the criminal fines are levied on people on low incomes for offences such as the non-payment of TV licences, fare dodging and truancy. These are indeed offences, and it is only right that if an offence is deemed to have occurred, a penalty must be applied. However, the issue here, too, is one of proportionality, in terms of the sums involved and the manner of the enforcement deployed.
	I also seek a statutory procedure requiring bailiffs to return cases involving vulnerable and impoverished debtors to the courts or the creditors, and powers to allow people subject to any bailiff action to apply to the courts for any bailiff warrant to be suspended—something that is missing from the 2007 Act. At present, that recourse is available only to people subject to county court bailiff warrants. People subject to bailiff warrants who have not been subject to county court applications have to rely on the good will and discretion of the creditor.
	Some bailiffs and courts rely on case law, which holds that a distress warrant cannot be withdrawn once it has been issued. That directly contradicts the national standards for enforcement agents, which suggests a procedure enabling the bailiff to return cases of vulnerable fine defaulters to the court. The procedure to bypass this anomaly recommended by the Ministry of Justice is to write a letter to the court asking for a re-hearing of the case. In practice, however, neither bailiffs nor fine defaulters seem to know this, and disproportionate fines are being paid by benefit claimants and other low-income groups, intensifying the poverty that pushed many of them into debt in the first place. My Bill would clear up the anomaly by enabling bailiffs to return vulnerable cases to the courts and creditors for reconsideration.
	Finally, we need a statutory provision for bailiffs to accept "affordable payments", with a definition of what that might mean in practice, so that before goods are seized or payment in full is demanded, an assessment is made of what can practically be afforded, at least in a single payment. By way of illustration, one of my constituents wrote to me a few weeks ago in the following terms:
	"I received a letter on the 10th of January notifying me that the bailiffs were to visit my house that same day, with regards to £191 arrears of Council Tax. I explained to someone in their office that I was not aware of that debt as I did not live at that address anymore. I made an arrangement to pay the money I did owe in instalments, the last of which—£63—was due on Easter Monday. I had no money at all, and called their office to make an arrangement. They said that unless I paid £195 today the bailiffs would come and carry my goods. I requested him to take the payment of £63 which clears my account, but he said the bailiffs will still come and carry my goods because I made the payment late and incurred a charge of £131!"
	This treatment of people simply will not do.
	My purpose today is not to put bailiffs in the firing line: some are good, some are bad, but all are operating in a framework that is not as it should be. Likewise, I am not singling out my own council, Westminster. Although I think that it makes too liberal a use of bailiffs, and it has certainly not developed the comprehensive advice and debt service that the local population needs, I do not think that it is uniquely bad. Indeed, I would commend officers in the finance department for the quality of service that they have offered to me in helping to deal with many of the difficult cases that I put to them. Nevertheless, we do have a grave problem with debt and debt recovery services, with disproportionately harsh penalties being applied to hundreds of thousands—if not millions, over years—of some of the most vulnerable people in the country. I believe that they need greater protection, and above all, to be freed from the fear of the implementation of the excessively harsh powers held in reserve in the legislation.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Ordered,
	That Ms Karen Buck, Martin Salter, Fiona Mactaggart, Mr. Gary Streeter, Dr. Alan Whitehead, Clive Efford, Mr. Andrew Dismore, Bob Russell, Mr. Andy Slaughter, Mr. Andrew Love and Mr. David Winnick present the Bill.
	Ms Karen Buck accordingly presented the Bill.
	 Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 16 October ,  and to be printed (Bill 102).

Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [ Lords]

[Relevant Document: The Ninth Report from the Joint Committee on Human Rights, Legislative Scrutiny: Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill, HC375 . ]
	 Second Reading

Jacqui Smith: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
	This Bill introduces measures to help complete the biggest overhaul of Britain's immigration system in a generation, strengthening our borders, controlling migration and ensuring that those who come to the UK earn the right to citizenship.

Desmond Swayne: Am I am alone in suspecting that this is an entirely content-free Bill? Will the Home Secretary explain in precisely what way the Bill will make it more difficult for people to come here whom we do not want to come here?

Jacqui Smith: Yes, that is what I am going to do.
	Over the past couple of years, we have made real progress in the immigration system. We have launched the UK Border Agency as a single force at the border, and we have toughened up our visa regime, effectively exporting the border by requiring biometric registration of all who wish to travel here on a visa. So far we have enrolled more than 4 million sets of fingerprints, flagging up thousands of cases of people who have swapped their identities.

Desmond Swayne: What has that got to do with this Bill?

Jacqui Smith: We are already issuing ID cards for foreign nationals—

Desmond Swayne: This Bill?

Mr. Speaker: Order. I say to the hon. Gentleman that you asked for an explanation and the Home Secretary is giving you an explanation. You have to be quiet while you are listening to the explanation.

Desmond Swayne: But not of this Bill, Sir.

Mr. Speaker: That is a matter for debate.

Jacqui Smith: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The hon. Gentleman has had lunch, but he did not have coffee.
	We are already issuing ID cards for foreign nationals—35,000 since last November. The points-based system is now fully operational, so that only those with the skills that we need can come to the UK to work and study.

Gerald Howarth: The Home Secretary has sought to persuade the House that somehow the Government have suddenly woken up to the problem and are doing something about it. When is she going to apologise to the British people for the overwhelming tide of migration that has hit this country? Since her Government came to power, five times as many are being admitted than were admitted under the Conservative Government. What has she to say to our constituents when she has let 500,000 migrants into this country? Her system has completely failed. When is she going to apologise?

Jacqui Smith: Today is obviously a day for the wagging of fingers, but perhaps if the hon. Gentleman looked at the figures he would realise that the most recent figures for net migration actually show a decrease. I shall go on to explain the Bill, and how the action that this Government have taken has enabled us to control migration to the benefit of this country.

Frank Field: Before that interruption, the Home Secretary was talking about the impact of the Government's points system. Will she have a chance this afternoon to develop the ideas that the Government clearly have in mind to encourage people to come here to work but to break the link whereby people who do so automatically become citizens?

Jacqui Smith: Yes, I can assure my right hon. Friend that I will take the opportunity to develop that argument and talk about how the infrastructure that we have now put in place enables us both to control the number of people coming for entry and, as he says, to move on to the next stage of reforms to citizenship and settlement.
	In July 2007, in one of my first acts as Home Secretary, I announced plans to establish the single border force. Already among the most secure in the world, Britain's borders have been further strengthened through the success of the UK Border Agency in proving its worth. Since April 2008, better deployment and the use of new technology have led to the seizure of illegal drugs worth more than £340 million and record numbers of dangerous weapons. Last year we prevented more than 30,000 individual clandestine attempts to enter the UK illegally. We have used the e-Borders system to screen nearly 90 million passengers, leading to more than 3,000 arrests including significant counter-terrorist interventions.

John Redwood: Does the Home Secretary believe that there should be some sort of limit on how many people come into the country, given the impact on public services, including housing? If so, what should it be each year?

Jacqui Smith: Yes, I believe that we should control migration to the benefit of this country. That is why the points-based system, even tier 2, has led to 12 per cent. fewer people coming in than would have been the case if the system had not been in place last year.

Rob Marris: My understanding is that approximately 80 per cent. of the people who move to this country are residents or citizens of one of the other 26 member states of the European Union. Are the Government prepared to reconsider the free movement of labour in the European Union?

Jacqui Smith: Free movement, and its relationship to trade and the free market, is an important element of our membership of the EU. We have taken action on new member states to ensure that, through the workers registration scheme—which the Opposition opposed—we are clear about being able to count and tackle benefit entitlement. However, we should maintain that significant ability to travel freely and work in the EU.

Colin Burgon: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the free movement of labour is effectively another term for an incomes policy, which dramatically affects only unskilled and semi-skilled people in this country?

Jacqui Smith: No, I believe that the minimum wage in this country protects wage levels. I agree with my hon. Friend that we need to consider the economic impact of migration. We have set up the Migration Advisory Committee to advise us on migration from outside the EU, and I shall say more about that as I develop my arguments.

Lembit �pik: Will the Home Secretary give way?

Jacqui Smith: No, I want to make a little more progress.
	We now have more people working to secure our borders than ever25,000 staff, including more than 9,000 warranted customs and immigration officers operating at the border, in local communities and in more than 135 countries worldwide.

Andrew MacKinlay: May I raise with the Home Secretary my dismay when arriving at Belfast city airport on parliamentary business on 29 March? A person there who subsequently identified himself as a member of the UK Border Agency, without credentials, used a security firm to demand identity and passports from people on a domestic flight. Officials, not the airline operator, did that. It is an abuse of power, and those officials need their knuckles rapped to ensure that they wear credentials and have a mandate from Parliament to make such demands. Is that endemic and widespread internally in the United Kingdom?

Jacqui Smith: If my hon. Friend believes that that person acted inappropriately, and he wants to write to me about it, we will ensure that the matter is investigated.
	Part 1 provides the legal backing for giving front-line customs and immigration staff powers and allows for the formal transfer of around 4,500 officers currently employed by Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, to create a single primary checkpoint. That full integration of customs frontier work is a major step forward in our border controls and it provides the platform for even closer co-operation between the UK Border Agency and the police. That is now a day-to-day reality, with enhanced co-ordination between the police and the UK Border Agency on intelligence sharing and joint operations. An integrated single border force works alongside the police, helping us to combat illegal immigration, prevent border tax fraud, take on organised crime networks, stop the trafficking of people, drugs and weapons and counter the threat of terrorism.

Keith Vaz: What the Home Secretary has said is helpful. However, if what she outlines is not also done with the co-operation of the entry clearance operation, the outcome will replicate the current situation, whereby there are hundreds of bogus colleges in this country and tens of thousands of bogus students who have been admitted because of the entry clearance position. The Minister for Borders and Immigration appeared before the Select Committee on Home Affairs this morning and confirmed the problem. Will the Home Secretary confirm that the Bill will help resolve the problem, and will she also

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Jacqui Smith: I know that my hon. Friend the Minister for Borders and Immigration was before my right hon. Friend's Committee this morning. However, he was actually confirming that, in introducing tier 4 of the points-based system in particular, but also in tightening up the requirement for sponsorship, which, incidentally, is further strengthened in the Bill, we are taking robust action against bogus colleges and those who purport to enter this country to study.

Lembit �pik: I am listening to the Home Secretary's argument, but would she accept that the increasingly rules-based nature of how we handle immigration creates undesirable unintended consequences? One of my constituents, Miss Cunningham, who is seriously ill, has had her request for a carer from the Philippine islands turned down on technical grounds. Does the Home Secretary recognise that the more we depend on a rules-based system, the less latitude Ministers have to interpret the guidelines in a sympathetic way? That can make the Government seem very heartless, as they have to Miss Cunningham.

Jacqui Smith: I think that it is a good thing to reduce the numerous routes that previously existed and to have a clear and fair system, as we have in the points-based system.
	Let me return to the strength of the border. Through the work of the e-Borders operations centre, or EBOC, joint working between those at the border and the police is helping to ensure the security of those who travel to and from the UK. I am clear that that is where we should be putting our energy. Such work provides the advantage of robust collaboration, but without the drawbacks of significant further structural change to policing, as advocated by some Opposition Members. We will take practical steps to deliver an effective working relationship between the police and the UK Border Agency, and not just at the border, but across the country.
	However, those who argue for greater border security cannot do so in all good faith while opposing the necessary wider protections that we have put in place. It is not enough to have the police and border officials working side by side. They also need the tools for the job, such as electronic border controls and ID cards for foreign nationals. Both of those protections are opposed by Opposition Members.

Kate Hoey: In making all those changes to our border controls, will the Home Secretary consider creating a new channel of entry for people carrying British passports, so that we do not have to queue up behind hundreds and thousands of people who are coming from other countries? Surely if we are coming into our own country with a British passport, we should have our own way of coming in.

Jacqui Smith: I hope that my hon. Friend has had the opportunity to register in and to see the operation of IRIS, the iris recognition immigration system, which is now in place at many airports, and to see the facial recognition gates operating in Manchester airport, both of which enable people with British passports to get through the necessary border controls, but much more quickly and effectively.

Andrew MacKinlay: Will my right hon. Friend give way?

Jacqui Smith: I will give way to my hon. Friend in a moment.
	I would also like to set out the Government's intentions in respect of the Bill's provisions on the common travel area, which I know has been the subject of considerable debate in another place. There are many benefits to the common travel area, and I am clear that I want it to remain intact. However, to preserve those benefits, we need to strengthen our safeguards, particularly when faced with clear evidence that the arrangements can be subject to abuse by serious and organised criminals and by illegal immigrants. The changes that we propose will not prevent British citizens or Irish nationals from entering the UK freely, as they do now. There is no intention to introduce fixed border controls on routes between the Crown dependencies and the UK. I do not expect any noticeable impact on the journeys of most passengers. Rather, the changes are targeted at identifying third-country nationals who are not travelling to the UK legitimately. In that context I hope that we can look for support from all parts of the House.

Stephen Pound: I am greatly reassured by my right hon. Friend's comments about the common travel arrangements. Will she confirm that there will be no possibility of a repeat of the unfortunate incident that occurred a few years ago when Irish citizens who were brought up in this country and may never have set foot in Ireland found themselves victims of custodial sentences, but were then faced with deportation on the completion of their sentences?

Jacqui Smith: That issue is not about the CTA. There are strong constraints, particularly in the EU, on which people can and cannot be deported. However, the UK's relationship with the Republic of Ireland in the common travel area is an important element, and one that our proposals are aimed at safeguarding. I am of course ready to consider any other options to deliver the policy objectives that I am sure we all share to counter the vulnerability that we have identified.
	Alongside our proposals for the integrated border force, and to preserve what is best about the common travel area, the Bill also proposes to strengthen our border controls in other ways. It amends existing powers so that we can take the fingerprints of foreign criminals subject to automatic deportation provisions, and it extends to Scotland a power to allow immigration officers to detain at port for up to three hours a person subject to a warrant for arrest, as is already the case in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
	Alongside taking the necessary steps to strengthen our border, we need to make immigration work in the interests of Britain, as several of my hon. Friends have already said. The points-based system is now fully up and running, and we have closed down the route to non-EU low-skilled migration. We have always said that the points system will allow us to be flexible in controlling migration, and more effective than the arbitrary cap proposed by the Opposition. It allows us to raise or lower the bar according to the needs of business and the country as a whole, as we showed in February when I announced changes to raise the qualification and salary levels for entering the UK as a highly skilled migrant, and when we announced proposals to give British workers a fair crack of the whip by ensuring that employers must advertise more skilled jobs through Jobcentre Plus before they can bring in a worker from outside Europe, and proposals to ensure that each future shortage occupation list published by the Migration Advisory Committee triggers skills reviews that focus on up-skilling domestic workers for those occupations.
	I am grateful for the work of Professor David Metcalf and his advisory committee, and if he advises us that we need to continue to tighten these measures in Britain's economic interest, we will do so. Overall, the decisions that we have taken to control migration will reduce the numbers of economic migrants coming to Britain and staying, while ensuring that we attract and keep the right peoplethose with the skills that our economy needs.
	Migration has brought us economic benefits, but it should not be a substitute for up-skilling the domestic work force. Nor should there be a right to automatic citizenship based purely on length of stay in Britain. Part 2 sets out the terms of the deal that we will expect newcomers to sign up to if they want to stay and build a life in this country.

Fiona Mactaggart: The Home Secretary talks about a deal between a migrant seeking citizenship and the state that awards that citizenship. Will she assure the House that there will be no circumstances in which an asylum seeker who has been on temporary admission for a long time because of delays by the Home Office in deciding their case will not have the time that they have been in the country counted as legal residence for the purposes of becoming a citizen, as is currently the case?

Jacqui Smith: There was considerable discussion on this issue in another place. I certainly think that we need to look at situations in which such delays are clearly a result of decision making not being done in time, and to look at ways in which that period of time could contribute to the period of residency for the purposes of citizenship. I do not believe that that should be a blanket provision, but I believe that there can be flexibility in the way in which we deal with that issue.

Robert Key: British immigration policy must be tough, but it must also be fair. Clause 39 refers to exceptions to the application of part 2, which deals with citizenship. In my constituency, there are about 40 families from the Malayali community in southern India. Those people have perfectly respectable jobs as doctors, computer engineers and so on. They have broken not a single rule and are not a burden on the state. They have been working here and they will shortly qualify for citizenship of this country. Under the Bill, unless we keep the amendment that was made in another place, they will not qualify for citizenship because the period of grace will disappear. Will the Home Secretary assure the House that, in the interest of fairness, she will not seek to remove clause 39 from the Bill?

Jacqui Smith: The hon. Gentleman is right that clause 39 was inserted in the other place to deal with transitional provisions, but we do not believe that the drafting of the clause would achieve what the hon. Gentleman outlined in his intervention. There are questions about the length of time that we want to take before the right provisions about earned citizenship come into place. We will, of course, look in further detail at how to deal with people already in this country and the basis on which they are here, but I do not think that we should have to wait until everyone who is here on a temporary basis has worked through the system before introducing what I think is the right deal, spelled out in our earned citizenship proposals. As part of that deal, people who want to make their home permanently here must be able to demonstrate their commitment to Britain by speaking English, working hard and playing by the rules.
	Our earned citizenship proposals provide a clearer and fairer journey to citizenship. They deliver simple steps and set the right balance between demonstrating commitment to the UK and gaining access to privilegesprivileges such as our benefits system, where we estimate that our proposals could result in savings of at least 350 million in the first five years. Those who show a real commitment to this country by making a positive contribution to the wider community will be able to complete the journey to citizenship more quickly. Requiring migrants to earn citizenship will, for the first time, mean that there is no automatic link, as was mentioned earlier, between coming to the UK to work or study and settling here permanently. I believe that breaking that link is an important new stage in our reform of immigration.

Frank Field: May I welcome the statement that my right hon. Friend has just made, but also ask her to develop her ideas on this very point? The Government are now committed not to growing the population through immigration, and if we are not going to do that, there needs to be a cap on the number of new citizens received in any one year. Will she clarify whether that is now also part of the Government's thinking?

Jacqui Smith: I know that my right hon. Friend has done a lot of work on this subject, and I think that he is right that now, as we put these measures into place, is the time also to give serious consideration to how we ensure that we have an appropriate level of control over the numbers of people granted the right to settle permanently in this country in the same way that we now have an appropriate level of control over those who can enter temporarily.

Keith Vaz: Will my right hon. Friend give way?

Jacqui Smith: No, I am in the process of completing my point. That is why the Government will bring forward proposals before the summer recess on how we can take the next steps towards a points-based system for the path to citizenship as wellin order precisely to put in place the sort of control that my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) has identified.

Keith Vaz: I am most grateful to the Home Secretary for giving way to me a second time. Is she telling the House that the Government now favour a capan absolute number that should not be exceededbecause, if so, that is quite different from what they have said in the past?

Jacqui Smith: What I have said is that while I do not think an arbitrary cap on entry, as proposed by Conservative Members, is the most effective and flexible way to control migration, I do believe that we should control the numbers coming into this country. We are doing that through the current points-based system. What I am arguing today is that we should go further and use what we know about the architecture that has been created to control the number of those granted citizenship at the next stage. That is why we will bring forward proposals on how to introduce a points-based system for the path to citizenship as well as for entry.

Damian Green: To be entirely clear, is the Home Secretary saying that even if a number of people have gone through all the extra hurdles to earn citizenshipdone the voluntary work and done everything elseshe is going to add on top of that a cap so that those going through those hurdles might well be refused in a single year? That is what she has just told the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz).

Jacqui Smith: No, I said precisely the opposite. It is Conservative Members who believe that an arbitrary cap is the best way to control immigration. I believe that what we have seen through the points-based systemwith levels of points that can be raised or lowered to suit the concerns and interests of this countryis the appropriate model to build on for a system to control the route to citizenship. It is a more flexible way of controlling those who go forward to citizenship.  [ Interruption. ]

Several hon. Members: rose

Jacqui Smith: The question that Conservative Members need to answer is whether they think it is now appropriate to move to the next stage of reform, and to consider the way in which we controlfor the benefit of Britainthe number of people who choose to settle here and proceed to citizenship. I have said that I think that that is the appropriate next stage of reform.
	The cornerstone of my approach to getting our immigration system right is that it does the right thing by the people whom it serves, and is seen to make decisions that are not only firm, but fair and fast.

Neil Gerrard: Will my right hon. Friend give way?

Jacqui Smith: No. I must make a little more progress now.
	That is why the Bill includes important provisions to enable children born outside the UK to a parent who is a foreign or Commonwealth member of our armed forces to apply for British citizenship, and to ensure that children born in the UK to such parents are automatically British at birth. It is why the Bill amends the British Nationality Act 1981, allowing British mothers to pass on their British citizenship to children born before 1961. It is why the Bill creates a new children's duty: a duty for the Border and Immigration Agency to change the way in which it works with children so that it discharges its functions in a way that safeguards and promotes their welfare.

Jeremy Corbyn: rose

Neil Gerrard: rose

Jacqui Smith: I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard).

Neil Gerrard: May I return the Home Secretary to what she said about a points-based system for citizenship? What she has just said in the middle of her speech seems to me to be fundamentally different from what is in the Bill. I do not know how we can debate and pass the Bill as it stands if we are told that such a measure is in the offing and will come at some point in the future. It is impossible to know what the routes to citizenship will be if we do not know how the new points-based system, which has come out of the blue, will operate.

Jacqui Smith: What I said was that the Bill gives us the framework for earned citizenship. It spells out the periods during which people need to fulfil certain requirements before they can move to the next stage of citizenship.

Jeremy Corbyn: Will the Home Secretary give way?

Jacqui Smith: Furthermore, we have successfully put in place a points-based systemusing, incidentally, immigration rules, not primary legislationin order to provide flexible control over those who come into the country. I consider the logical next stage, on which there will be full consultation, to be consideration of whether and how a points-based system for citizenship would work.

Jeremy Corbyn: Will Home Secretary give way?

Jacqui Smith: Building on a comprehensive programme of immigration reform, the Bill introduces measures to make our borders more secure, to ensure that only migrants who can be of benefit to Britain are selected, and to set the standards by which newcomers can progress towards citizenship.

Lynne Jones: Will my right hon. Friend give way?

Jacqui Smith: These are firm measures, but they are fair. They get the balance right, and they have at their heart our commitment to deliver an immigration system that works in the interests of Britain and British citizens. I commend the Bill to the House.

Chris Grayling: It is probably appropriate for me to begin by marking what now appears to be the Home Secretary's final appearance at the Dispatch Box by noting that she is Britain's first female Home Secretary. I congratulate her on her decision to preannounce the reshufflethat will cause a great deal of interest around this place, and may cause a bit more consternation in Downing street; indeed, I suspect that the mobile phones are on the move there againand on her achievement in becoming Britain's first woman Home Secretary.
	Britain's migration system has been in crisis for the best part of a decade, but, eight Bills and much rhetoric later, the Government have no solutions to offer. Worse still, they are not even capable of pushing through their own ideas on how to deal with the issues that they face. How do we know that? Well, last summer they published a draft Bill containing a range of ideas, most of which are still where they startedon the drawing board. That is why the Home Secretary had so little to say about the Bill this afternoon. We heard a fair amount about immigration issues, but precious little about the Bill itself. What we have now is not the comprehensive measure that the Government presented last year, but a haphazard mix of a few ideas: some that might help a little; some that are meaningless; and, in between, a few that are just absurd. The Bill will require extensive scrutiny as it passes through the House in order to try to sort out some of its problems.
	All that comes from a Government who have clearly run out of purpose. We thought they had run out of ideas until the Home Secretary brought forward some new proposals, rather to the consternation of some of her fellow Labour Members. We will, no doubt, find out a bit more about them as we proceed, and we will discover whether there is any substance to them. We need action to tackle the problems in our immigration system, but this Bill and this Government cannot deliver that action.

Rob Marris: May I ask the hon. Gentleman the same question that I asked my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary? Given that about 80 per cent. of immigration into the UK is made up of people who are residents of other EU member states, does the hon. Gentleman think the UK Government should look again at the free movement of labour provisions within the EU?

Chris Grayling: As the hon. Gentleman knows, we have always argued for transitional arrangements for new member states. It was this Government, not us, who took the decision not to impose those transitional arrangements, unlike almost every other European country. We would certainly put them in place for new member states. As for existing immigration from eastern Europe, however, that is a result of a decision taken by Ministers of this Government four or five years ago, so that train has long since left the station.

Rob Marris: The hon. Gentleman has misunderstood my question. I am not talking about transitional arrangements. Instead, I am talking about one of the fundamental aspects of the architecture of the EUthe free movement of labour. I think there is a case for looking at that again. Does the hon. Gentleman agree?

Chris Grayling: No, I do not think we are going to look again at the free movement of labour within the EU. However, the hon. Gentleman should recognisehe will discover this, if he looks at the statisticsthat migration into this country from outside the EU remains higher than migration from inside the EU. We have long argued for an absolute cap on the number of people coming into this country from outside the EU. That remains our policy and we wish that the current Government would adopt it, but the truth is that they will not do so.
	Over the past 10 years, this Government have presided over the most chaotic situation in our immigration system in modern history. Even the Minister for Borders and Immigration has admitted that
	People didn't believe the authorities knew what they were doing, and there's a very good reason for thatthey didn't.

John Gummer: Will my hon. Friend help me by explaining to the House why imposing a limit on the number of people coming in from outside the EU is imposing an arbitrary figure, whereas a figure fixed by the Government for the number of people in any one year who can have citizenship is not an arbitrary figure?

Chris Grayling: My right hon. Friend's point speaks for itself. We have a Government who are all over the place in their policy and in what they say, and who have presided over a system that is chaotic, illogical and ill-managed.

Desmond Swayne: Does my hon. Friend read any significance into the fact that after having announced the new policy on citizenship, the Secretary of State pointedly refused to take no fewer than three interventions from her own side, despite delivering what was a relatively short speech for a Second Reading debate?

Chris Grayling: My hon. Friend is right, and I have a sneaking suspicion that the next Home Secretary may not be as keen to adopt the policy as the current one is on the eve of her departure from her post.
	The reality is stark. Immigration into this country has increased fivefold since this Government came to power. A decade ago, net immigration into the UK was less than 50,000 a year; by 2007, that figure had risen to almost 250,000. On top of that, the Government admit that there are more than 500,000 illegal immigrants in the UK. The UK population is now projected to grow to 71 million by 2031, with half that growth directly attributed to new migration. Public services simply cannot cope with an unplanned rate of change on the scale of recent years. Police forces are struggling with the cost of translation services; schools in areas of high migration face the challenges of large numbers of pupils without English as a first language; health services will struggle to cope with the extra demands of new arrivals; and Ministers do not seem to have much of an idea on what to do about the problem.
	The Home Secretary still this afternoon refuses to take the very obvious step of limiting the number of new arrivals. The sensible approach is very simple: introduce an annual limit on immigration and bring immigration down to manageable levels. When Ministers talk about introducing an Australian-style, points-based system for this country, they forget that the Australians themselves set a limit on immigration.

Pete Wishart: As the hon. Gentleman will know, in Scotland we face structural population decline, not population increase. I have heard him talk about the Conservative cap; what would be the cap in Scotland?

Chris Grayling: We will have a cap for the United Kingdom as a wholewe have not reached the point of having a Scottish-only immigration system. I have no doubt that the hon. Gentleman will do his best to promote Scotland as a place to live, work and invest, and rightly so.
	Despite the tough talk of MinistersI listened with amazement to what the Home Secretary said about our borders and the policing of themthey are failing to police our borders properly. We know that the number of removals from the UK is falling and that even when Ministers have extensive details about illegal immigrants, they fail to act. I keep raising at oral questions the issue of the thousands of illegal immigrants revealed 18 months ago to have been cleared to work in the security industry by the Security Industry Authority. We know that only a handful of those people have been deported, but more worrying still is the fact that Ministers are not even able to give a clear assurance that none of those people are still employed in the security industry. Indeed, the last time I raised the issue it was pretty clear that Ministers had no idea what happened to those people and where they have gone since the situation was exposed.

Jeremy Corbyn: The hon. Gentleman will be aware that there are many people in this country who have been here for quite a long time, who do jobs that nobody else wants to do and who lead a very poor existence. Many people, including me and some members of his party, including the Mayor of London, support the Strangers into Citizens campaign to treat these people decently, give them legality and ensure that they are able to live safely in our society. Does the hon. Gentleman not think that, with all his passion, he should say a word or two about them?

Chris Grayling: There are many people who are living and working in this country at the moment. I believe that people who come to this country should do so legally, through the appropriate systems. They should be able to apply to stay here and should be able to stay if the system judges that that is what should happen. I am not in favour of taking steps that would allow people who are here illegally to justify their existence here and remain. People who want to come to Britain should do so through the proper channels.
	We must also consider the Government's failure to deport foreign prisoners. Only a minority of those from overseas who have been jailed in this country in recent years were actually deported after their release, and we have had hundreds of cases of deportations being aborted because of the disruptive behaviour of the person concerned and the refusal of the airline to take them. That comes after seven immigration Bills since 1997. None of them sorted the problem out, and there is little reason to believe that this one, the eighth, will make more of a difference than its predecessors.
	That is particularly the case given all the things that were left behind on the journey from the draft Bill to the Bill before the House today. The original part 1 of the draft Bill, which was on regulation of entry into, and stay in, the UK has gone. Part 4 was on expulsion orders and removals. Among other things, it would have strengthened the Government's ability to fulfil their pledge on increasing deportations, and it would have broadened the definition of foreign criminalsbut it is gone. Part 5 would have strengthened the power to detain, and it would also have helped to deal with the problem of immigrant offenders on aircraftthat is gone, too. Part 6 would have reformed the management of removal centres, and part 7 would have tightened the rules on access to the UK, the use of false documentation, breaches of expulsion orders and absconding from detention.

John Redwood: Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the problems is that an awful lot of money and effort have gone into the wrong things? We often do not have enough staff at Heathrow and the other main ports of entry to deal courteously and quickly with all the legitimate people coming in and to take the necessary steps to weed out the ones who should not be coming in. Is that not a question of misplaced resources and bad management?

Chris Grayling: My right hon. Friend is absolutely right about bad management; I shall come to talk about the policing of our borders in a moment, because that is one of the big gaps in our system.
	The Government have lost part 8 of the draft Bill, which would have addressed carriers' liability. Part 9 would have introduced tougher rules on employing illegal workers. All the things that I have mentioned have gone, and when the spine of a Bill is ripped out, it is hardly surprising that the Bill collapses under scrutiny. This Bill will do no harm, but little good.
	So, what is left? Part 1 of the stripped-down Bill tinkers with the powers given to the UK Border Agency, which was set up by the Government to create a semblance of action, but as usual what this Government are doing misses the point. The Bill only shuffles things around and does not deal with our biggest problemour porous borders. The fact that our borders are so poorly controlled is a big challenge. A huge proportion of illegal immigrants in Britain arrive in the back of a lorry. People trafficking is causing misery and despair to those caught up in it, yet the lax controls at our borders make us a magnet for the traffickersno wonder the UK is classified as a high-level destination country for trafficking.
	We are pleased that in part 4 the Government have answered our call to amend the law that allowed very young children to be trafficked with impunity. The measure will amend the definition of exploitation to remove the requirement for a child to be requested or induced to undertake any activity in order for an act to be regarded as trafficking for exploitation. But that is not enough and more will need to be done. The issue is not only people being smuggled into the countrysenior police officers have warned about the scale of smuggling of illegal firearms and replica weapons into the UK, and the Government have admitted the scale of the problem.
	I listened with astonishment to the Home Secretary's remarks about how secure our borders are. Only a few months ago, the Minister for Borders and Immigrationalways a useful source for thoughts about why the Government's policies are not workingtold a newspaper:
	We have, compared to other rich countries, been liberal in our border controls.
	A few moments ago, the Home Secretary described those borders as among the most secure in the world. No wonder we do not have joined-up thinking about immigration in Whitehall.
	Then we had the Home Secretary boasting about her border force, butextraordinarilyit has no policing responsibility. I heard a lot of nonsense from her about integrated policing. I have talked to police in our ports in areas where they have to cover points of entry into the country, and they have a constant battle to balance local policing with the need for policing in the ports. A police officer from a port may be policing the town centre on a Friday or Saturday night rather than policing the port, and that is not good enough.

Albert Owen: The hon. Gentleman says that he has been round the ports, but I am not sure that he has been to the port of Holyhead in my constituency. I go there regularly, and the system works well. The hon. Gentleman is talking about chief constables who complain about cuts in their forces, but within the ports counter-terrorist units have been set up, with close co-operation between the police and the UK Border Agency. Has he seen that working, or is he only listening to chief constables?

Chris Grayling: In this country, we have a piecemeal approach to policing our borders, with a pocket of policing here and another there. In too many places we have inadequate policing that is divided between different responsibilities. The Conservatives remain convinced that we need a dedicated border police force [ Interruption. ] The Home Secretary is muttering about the e-Borders project. We do not object to the principle of keeping a record of who comes into and goes out of the country. However, I do not believe that we need to maintain detailed records of 10 years of holiday arrangements, holiday partners or credit card statements for every citizen who wants to go on holiday. We need to achieve a balance in what we do, and the Government have completely failed to find that balance.
	Part 2 deals with citizenship. We have just heard about the chaotic Government policy on that issue. We have one set of changes in this Bill and now we discover that another set of changes will be introduced before the summer, according to the Home Secretary. Why can we not do this properly in one go, if she has a grand plan for the issue? Judging by the comments from those on the Labour Benches, her successor will struggle to get any such measures past the Labour party.
	The citizenship proposals in the Bill construct a complicated and bureaucratic set of mechanisms to deal with the adverse consequences of out-of-control immigrationconsequences that we have been warning about for years. Now we know that the Government's plan is to introduce a new points-based systemthe second in our immigration system. The new category of probationary citizenship will be a precursor to citizenship, to replace the existing limited leave to remain. What does the new category add of value to the existing arrangements?
	As for the concept of active citizenship, the basic principle is that those who wish to become British citizens should contribute to this country, and that is well established. Someone is granted citizenship every five minutes in this country and, of course, they want to play a positive role in our society. British citizenship is a privilege, not a right, but we do not know how the active citizenship proposals will work in practice. As usual, the Government intend to set out the details in secondary legislation, but Parliamentary should have the opportunity to scrutinise the important question of which activities will count towards qualifying for citizenship.

Keith Vaz: When the Home Affairs Committee considered the issue, we were concerned that there is no list of acceptable activities for people to engage in. Many new immigrants spend their time on informal relationships and attending informal activities, which would not be properly regulated. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it should be for Parliament and the public to send in suggestions about what would constitute active citizenship? More work needs to be done in this area, so that we have a clear list available for people to follow.

Chris Grayling: The Home Affairs Committee Chairman makes a very good point. I agree with him that input from Parliament and the people whom we represent would be welcome. It is a shame that as usual, sadly, we have to debate such a Bill in this House. It has been reduced in size to such a degree that it will surely allow more detail to be studied in the areas where it is debating change. Surely there will be room for discussion such as that which the right hon. Gentleman proposes.

John Gummer: Before my hon. Friend leaves that point, is this not another example of serious issues that affect the human rights of people in this country being pushed aside into subsidiary legislation instead of being discussed in this Chamber by those people who are elected to deal precisely with these matters? Is that not part of the reason why we have lost so much of the respect of the people?

Chris Grayling: I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend. We need less legislation done well rather than the glut of legislation that we have had under this Government, which, since we are on the eighth immigration Bill, palpably does not work in the way that we would like it to. We want less legislation done well, with proper scrutiny and proper detail, rather than eight immigration Bills done badly, which is what we have had under this Government.
	Has the Home Secretary fully considered the impact of effectively compelling those who want to accelerate their path to citizenship to undertake voluntary work? What will be the impact on the voluntary sector? There is also the question of how the condition will be applied in a fair manner that does not put certain groups of applicants at a disadvantage.

Stephen Pound: It is perhaps salutary to note that until my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) left, there were people of nine different national origins sitting in this Chamber. Does the hon. Gentleman not accept that under the previous political Administration a person could become a British citizen and not speak a word of English? That is no longer the case. Will he give credit to this Government and this Administration for at least introducing that requirement, which he surely believes in and supports?

Chris Grayling: I do indeed. I would go further and strengthen those requirements. However, one small piece of success does not detract from the fact that we have a system in chaos that has been mismanaged over a decade and desperately needs to change.

Desmond Swayne: A few moments ago, the Secretary of State was asking my hon. Friend from a sedentary position whether he would support her proposals. I hope that he will give no such commitment, as we have no idea what those proposals will be, as yet.

Chris Grayling: My hon. Friend makes a good point. Since the Secretary of State has announced a new range of policies in relation to citizenship this afternoon that no one else in the House knew were coming, I think that we should wait with bated breath to see what else the Government bring forward during the course of the Bill.

Robert Key: On consideration of the timetable motion later today, will my hon. Friend make absolutely sure that there is time to debate the issues, which will be put before the House at some point in the future and which will involve something that we do not know about yet? Will he also fight hard to retain clause 39, which was put into the Bill in the other place with the support of our noble Friends? This is a matter of fairness and justice. We can toughen up our immigration policy a great deal, but we must be fair.

Chris Grayling: I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. We need a tougher immigration system in this country and we need tougher controls, but above all the system has to be fair and welcoming to those who have the right to be here. It is important that we balance necessary toughness with common human decency, which would characterise the policies on this side of the House were we to hop to that side of the House in the near future.

Derek Twigg: I want to hear a bit more about the hon. Gentleman's capping policy. Has he any figures for the numbers by which it would reduce immigration? Secondly, would the capping be by occupation or profession?

Chris Grayling: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is very keen to discover Conservative policy, but we are dealing with a situation that is probably a year away. Before we get to that point, I would be delighted to write to him and the public as a whole with more detail about what we intend to do.
	Let me move on to what I think is the most absurd portion of the Billthe proposed change to the common travel area. For most of the past century, people travelling between the UK, the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man and the Republic of Ireland have been able to do so without border and immigration controls. Anyone who is tempted to be reassured by the Home Secretary's comments should go back and look at the  Hansard record from the other place to be absolutely clear about the Government's intentions.
	The common travel area was introduced in 1921, when Ireland was partitioned. It survived throughout the second world war. Only now have the Government decided that change is necessary; we disagree. The Government's proposals are unworkable and should be scrapped. We oppose them, most importantly because the plan is completely unenforceable. What on earth is the point of having tougher controls at ports and airports between, for example, Britain and the Republic of Ireland if the land border between the two does not exist in any physical form at all? All the security installations between the two have been dismantled, and in many places the border has always been no more than a bend on a country lane.
	Unless the Government are now planning to introduce border controls between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom, their plans are completely unworkable. I trust that even this authoritarian Administration do not propose to introduce internal movement controls within the UK. That is why we brought forward an amendment in the other place to remove the proposals from the Bill. I very much hope that Ministers will accept that change, but I fear that they plan to continue the battle to secure a change that is not needed and not workable.
	In the light of recent events, the glaring omission from the Bill concerns student visas. It is clear that the student visa system is being exploited by thousands of bogus colleges acting as fronts for illegal immigration. We have warned the Government about that for years. Getting a student visa for Britain is big business in Pakistan. High-quality fake documents that will help applicants to get visas are on sale for 100, and self-styled immigration consultants are hard at work trying to beat the system. The British high commission in Pakistan previously estimated that half of all students to whom it grants visas disappear after reaching the UK. Just last week, a national newspaper reported that four of the students recently arrested and later released had certificates from a bogus college in Manchester. They were then given places at English universities. The institution in question allegedly brought hundreds of people over from Pakistan before eventually being shut down by the Home Office.
	Despite that threat, in April we found that student visa applications from Pakistan are being handled by the UK Border Agency not in Pakistan but in Abu Dhabi, to allow for a reduction in staff in Islamabad. Anxious to appear to be tackling the problem, the Government introduced a new, much shorter, list of approved colleges for sponsoring UK student visas. The Minister for Borders and Immigration boldly claimed that that formed part of
	the most significant changes to our immigration system since the Second World War.
	There were about 15,000 institutions on the Government's approved register, but now there are only 1,500 institutions on the list. That dramatic reduction prompts the question why many of them were on the official list in the first place.

Phil Woolas: It is simply not the case that there were ever 15,000 institutions on any approved list. The Government's estimate was that 15,000 institutions were attempting to attract such people. There are in fact 1,600 sponsored institutions.

Chris Grayling: If there were only 1,600 sponsored institutions, the Government have reduced the total by about 100. What guarantees can they give us that the system is now as watertight as the Minister for Borders and Immigration appears to suggest that it is?

Phil Woolas: I invite the hon. Gentleman to do his homework. If he reads the evidence that was given to the Home Affairs Committee this morning, he will find that what he has just said is simply not the case.

Chris Grayling: We will see about that.

Keith Vaz: I hope that the hon. Gentleman will read the evidence that the Minister gave to the Committee this morning. As a direct result of it, we are even more concerned about the number of students in the country at the moment who are seeking an extension. We have decided to extend our inquiry and will invite Ministers from the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills to give evidence, because this is not just a Home Office issue; it is an issue for DIUS, too. We will continue with the inquiry because we believe that it merits the attention.

Chris Grayling: I am grateful to the Select Committee Chairman for that, and I hope that Ministers will look carefully at the report that he and his colleagues will put together. It worries me that the Minister is so cavalier in his responses this afternoon, when quite clearly the Select Committee has identified a serious issue that remains to be addressed.
	This is a weak Bill from a weak Government. In recent months the Minister for Borders and Immigration made a series of tough comments designed to capture headlines in the tabloid press, but the Bill shows the big gap between the rhetoric and the reality. We have moved from the publication of an extensive draft Bill last summer to the formal proposal of a timid and insubstantial Bill this spring. Nowhere do we see any of the changes that should have been brought before the House to deal with the problems of our chaotic immigration system. There are no proposals formally to establish a border police force to deal with trafficking, smuggling and illegal immigration. There is no attempt to establish an annual limit on immigration into the UK, and there are no moves significantly to strengthen the rules to ensure that all new arrivals speak English to an adequate level. Instead, there is a hotch-potch of measures, some of which may make a bit of difference, while others, such as the proposals on the common travel area, make no sense at all. After 12 years in government, and 12 years of failure to manage our immigration system, that is the best that the current set of Ministers can come up with. Small wonder that so many people now think that what we really need to change is not Ministers but the Government.

Neil Gerrard: I wish to begin by saying something about part 2 and its proposals on citizenship and naturalisation. Becoming a British citizen is an important step. If someone becomes a British citizen, they gain unrestricted access to work, the ability freely to go in and out of the country, to stay away for as long as they wish, the right to vote and so on. People regard citizenship as significant. When citizenship ceremonies were first introduced, I was a little sceptical about whether they would work and whether they would be viewed as something that mattered. However, I have gone to citizenship ceremonies, and spoken to people taking part. They regard that ceremony and the acquisition of citizenship as important.
	I am concerned about the uncertainty created by the part 2 proposals. At the moment, the route to citizenship is fairly clear. The granting of temporary permissionI know there are many different forms of temporary permissionleads to indefinite leave to remain which, in turn, leads to citizenship. It is confusing that, according to the Bill, the right to indefinite leave appears to have been removed, and permanent permission is wrapped up with citizenship. Consequently, people will be subject to much longer periods of uncertainty and temporary permission before they can acquire the permanent permission to stay that comes with citizenship.

Phil Woolas: My hon. Friend speaks from great knowledge of his constituents. May I just reassure him that the proposals do not affect individuals who already have indefinite leave to remain?

Neil Gerrard: I absolutely appreciate that point, but a different mechanism will apply in future when the indefinite leave status will not be granted to people. Instead, they will get citizenship, and with that they will gain permanent permission to stay.
	May I just say a word about something that the Home Secretary said, which I do not think any of us had heard about beforethe suggestion that there might be a points-based system in relation to citizenship? Obviously, we have no idea what that would actually mean, but I can see how the points-based system that applies to people coming here to work might translate into a points-based system for citizenship. It is likely that under a citizenship points-based system people will gain points if they are in work or perhaps even depending on the money that they earn. They will gain points depending on whether they are involved in certain activities such as community service and voluntary activity, which are mentioned in the Bill. In turn, that means that some people will be fundamentally disadvantaged by the proposals on work and voluntary activity. Inevitably, it will be more difficult for people with health problems, people with disabilities, and perhaps elderly people to gain such points. Certainly, some women will find it much more difficult to take part in the voluntary activity that is suggested as a means of accelerating the acquisition of citizenship.
	The Bill will discriminate against certain people because the proposals on voluntary activity, as drafted, will make it easier for some people to pass the test than others. If that proposal is then incorporated into a points system, it could well mean that some people will wait much, much longer before they can qualify for citizenship. That will certainly impact on people who do not have a lot of money. Volunteering sounds great, but it is not necessarily expense free. People acting as volunteers may not always do so without some cost to themselves. Some of the voluntary sector organisations have pointed out as a possible problem that they may not be able to recompense a volunteer's expenses.

Tom Brake: The hon. Gentleman may also have received representations from voluntary organisations expressing their concern about their possible role in monitoring that voluntary work, and the responsibilities and perhaps the additional costs that will come with it.

Neil Gerrard: That is a valid point. We are in danger of setting up some quite bureaucratic structures in order to try and monitor the voluntary work, if that is to be done in a meaningful way.
	There has been some discussion in the debate about students coming to fake colleges. I can promise my hon. Friend the Minister for Borders and Immigration that if the systems in the Bill are put in place, fake voluntary organisations will come into existence and attempt to make money by charging people for certificates saying that they have done some voluntary work in order to help them into citizenship. I can almost guarantee that that will happen if the system is implemented. I see my hon. Friend smiling and nodding.

Phil Woolas: My hon. Friend makes a good point. At all stages in immigration policy, one has to predict where it will go. By highlighting the point, he is helping the Government to prevent it.

Neil Gerrard: I hope the Government will think again about the requirement. I suspect that it will be very difficult to implement it in any meaningful way that is free from abuse and does not lead to some people, through no fault of their own, being disadvantaged because they find it difficult, as a result of their circumstances, to take part in any meaningful voluntary activity. Somebody who is working long hours, who is doing shift work, or who is a single parentwith the best will in the world, such a person may find it extremely difficult to undertake voluntary activity.

Lynne Jones: Does my hon. Friend share my concerns that the Home Secretary did not address the recommendations made in pre-legislative scrutiny by the Joint Committee on Human Rights and the Home Affairs Committee on such issues as retrospective changes being brought in, and that she would not give way when I attempted to raise the issue, and also that the Bill does not deal with earlier recommendations from the Joint Committee in relation to what appears to be a deliberate policy of destitution for many people who, through no fault of their own, cannot return home?

Neil Gerrard: I very much agree, and I shall come on to the point about destitution.
	On the issue of transitional arrangements, which was raised earlier, there is some protection now through clause 39, which was introduced in the Lords, for people who have applied for citizenship or indefinite leave and for people in the final qualifying year. I am not convinced that that goes far enough. We ought to learn from the fiasco resulting from the changes to the highly skilled migrants programme, when the rule was changed from a four-year qualifying period to a five-year qualifying period to get indefinite leave. That led to a High Court case, which was lost, leading to the policy having to be thought through again. I suspect we may end up along the same route if we are not careful and if we do not make sure that there are transitional arrangements in the Bill.
	I accept that it is impossible for transitional arrangements to exempt from the provisions anybody who is already in the country for whatever reason, but people who are already well through the process and getting towards the point where they can acquire citizenship ought to be protected in the transitional arrangements.
	On qualification for citizenship, there is another issue: employment for people who have entered the country as migrant workers. The Lords discussed the requirement for continuous employment, and I have concerns about how that might be interpreted, especially if, as may be, the courts get involved in the interpretation of continuous employment. In the Lords debates, Ministers said that there would be circumstances in which an employer could change. For instance, if an employer went bankrupt, it would clearly not be reasonable to say that a person had been out of continuous employment if they then went into another job.
	People may well find themselves locked into staying with the same employer, however, and they may find it difficult to change jobs during the qualifying period. Concerns have been expressedcertainly by a number of trade unionsabout what that might mean: the potential for exploitation, and the potential for people to be locked into working conditions that are even unlawful. Indeed, we know that that happens now. Someone who has a dubious immigration status or is scared about what might happen to them if they lose their job can end up working in unlawful conditions, not being paid the minimum wage and so on. They are scared to complain, however, because they are scared of the consequences. They are scared that they will lose their job, apart from anything else. If another consequence is going to be that they lose their qualifying period for citizenship and have to go back to the beginning of the process, that will act as a further incentive not to complain. We must therefore look at introducing some safeguards on the qualifying periods.
	A similar point arises about safeguards on periods of absence from the country. Ministers gave some assurances in the Lords, but it is currently possible to average periods of absence over the five years, and I should like the Bill to retain that averaging system.

Jeremy Corbyn: My hon. Friend will be aware that in the Lords there was discussion about an amendment to enable Chagos islanders who were born before 1969, but to parents from those islands, to be granted British citizenship in line with all the others who were granted citizenship through the British Overseas Territories Act 2002. Unfortunately, the Government resisted such amendments. Does my hon. Friend think that the Bill would be improved if such an amendment were made at some stage in this House?

Neil Gerrard: This would be an appropriate place to try to look for a solution to the Chagos islands problem, which has been going on for some considerable time.
	One other matter that I hope the Minister will address in his winding-up speech is access to benefits and services. It is generally accepted that full access to benefits and services should be withheld until someone has either citizenship or permanent residence. Indeed, that is essentially the current situation: certain benefits and services cannot be accessed until someone has permanent residence, at least. However, given that the Bill extends the qualifying period for citizenship, I am concerned that people will end up paying taxes for much longer periods without being able to reap the benefits from those taxes or to access even contribution-based benefits. I should be extremely concerned if, in the regulations that follow the Bill, any attempt were made to restrict access to health care for a longer period than operates at present.
	Unless I missed it, when introducing the Bill, the Home Secretary did not mention the provision to restrict judicial review applications. That caused some argument and controversy in the Lords, and I hope that it will be covered in the winding-up speeches. Clause 55 includes an amendment that was made in the Lords, limiting the cases that can be transferred from the High Court to the upper tribunal. I strongly believe that it ought still to be possible to go to the High Court.

Keith Vaz: My hon. Friend has been here long enough to remember previous immigration Bills in which the Government said that they wanted to streamline the appeals process so that there was a need for only one tribunal; if anyone needed judicial review, they could go to the High Court. What my hon. Friend has mentioned goes against the philosophy that the Government have developed in the past 12 years. The Government are returning the cases to a new, upper tribunal, having said that we did not need a second tribunal.

Neil Gerrard: That is absolutely right. I always thought it perfectly sensible for there to be a single appeal. There were systems, for example, under which someone would have an appeal against an asylum decision and, separately, another appeal when there was an attempt to remove them. It makes sense to put the two together so that the appeal looks both at the asylum decision and at human rights applications, for instance.
	The issues can be complicated and are fundamental to human rights; they are about whether someone will be allowed to remain in this country or will be removed. In such important cases, it ought to be possible to go to a High Court judge. I am hoping for reassurance that in the later stages of consideration no attempt will be made to remove the Lords amendment in respect of clause 55.
	I should like to conclude by discussing destitution, an issue raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Lynne Jones). As has been pointed out, the scope of the Bill has been very restricted in comparison with that of the draft Bill that we considered last year. The draft Bill would have consolidated and covered a whole range of issues, and allowed us to debate them, which are missing from this Bill. We should be considering the clearly missing issues of the support of asylum seekers and the number of people who are in this country for one reason or another and are living in destitution.
	Let us consider those who have been refused leave to remain but are still in the country; very significant numbers of them are from countries that the Government recognise are not safe to return people to: Zimbabwe, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Somalia and so on. Yet we require those people to sign up to section 4 to get support. That means that they have to sign a piece of paper saying that they are prepared to go back, although they are terrified of doing so. If they do not sign, they get nothing; we do not even allow those who have signed up to section 4 to work to support themselves, even when we know that they may be in the country for a significant period.

Jeremy Corbyn: I thank my hon. Friend for giving way a second time. Does he share my concern that the Democratic Republic of the Congo is not included in the list of countries too dangerous to return people to? Sometimes the information relating to what is or is not a safe country seems incredibly subjective.

Neil Gerrard: There are a lot of examples of dubious decisions about where it is safe or not safe to return people to. I am sure that my hon. Friend will have seen the reports about the treatment of some people who have been returned to the Congo; they have ended up in the hands of jailers.

Lynne Jones: A young woman from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, who was living in my constituency, is awaiting deportation to the DRC tomorrow. She has no relatives there, but is being sent back. She fears that she will be subject to arrest, rape and other mistreatments that, as has been well documented, have happened to other people who have been deported to that country.

Neil Gerrard: I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. There is evidence that that has happened in returns to other countries.
	Irrespective of the returns policy, I come back to the issue of the destitution of those people who are here. If we accept that someone cannot be returned, which is essentially what we do when we let someone be supported under section 4, we should be looking at giving that person the opportunity to support themselves by working until it is possible to return them to their country of origin. It is a pity that those aspects of asylum support are not covered in the Bill, which means we do not have the opportunity properly to consider what those support systems should be.
	I hope that in winding up the debate the Minister will answer some of my questions, particularly on judicial review. I also hope that we can hear more about exactly what is being considered in terms of the points-based system towards citizenship. That represents a fundamental change, and we should know something about it before the Bill has completed its passage through this place, given that it has already been through the Lords and there will be no opportunity to amend it further other than in the Commons.

Christopher Huhne: I am grateful to be able to follow the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard), whose expertise in this area is well known. I strongly agree with his points on judicial review and on destitution, which are well taken.
	The Home Secretary and I have had a pleasant and genial relationship, but I have always been surprised at how little we have been able to agree on. Nevertheless, I certainly pay tribute to her, not least for being the first woman Home Secretary, which is an important milestone for this House and for Government.
	I am afraid that this Bill is another example of the Government forcing through ill-thought-out, poorly drafted legislation. It is the 11th immigration Bill since 1997we have had almost one a yearyet it still does not deliver on the Government's promise of a Bill that would simplify and consolidate the entire immigration and asylum system; for that we must wait at least until the end of this year. Instead, we have an interim Bill with more piecemeal reformssome good, some bad, and some, frankly, unclear. Like the hon. Member for Walthamstow, I must confess to being confused about exactly what the Government are proposing as regards the points-based system and citizenship.
	Much of the detail will remain a mystery until the slew of statutory instruments for which the Bill provides is forthcoming. Admittedly, I have not had such a long career here, but I cannot remember ever having seen a Bill before the House with so many clauses involving phrases such as
	The Treasury may by order make provision for,
	The Attorney General may by order assign to,
	and
	The Secretary of State may make regulations.
	There is an astonishing degree of reliance of statutory instruments. When in doubt, the Government want to give Ministers the power to make things up at a later date. This is yet another Trust me, I'm a Minister Bill. Well, this House should not trust Ministers with clean-sheet powers. We do not even know who those Ministers will be this time next week, let alone in a year's time.
	Such matters of border control and nationality are far too important to be left to statutory instrument and should be debated as primary legislation on the Floor of this House. We are, after all, debating nothing less than what defines us as a nation, for any country that cannot control its borders cannot choose who lives among us, and soon cedes its own identity. The defence of the realm and the establishment of border control is one of the most basic functions of Government. Admittedly, it has never been easy for a nation with the third longest coastline in Europe, at 7,758 milesas generations of west country smugglers who evaded the excise men knew. Nor should we underestimate the challenges posed by the new age of mass travel and globalisation. The number of people entering and leaving this country every year is more than three times the number in our population. In 2006 we recorded 192 million passenger movements in aviation alone, not counting the channel tunnel or shipping, and 279 million tonnes of freight was importedan increase of 50 per cent. in just a decade. Every flight full of tourists and honest business people may also carry illegal migrants, and every lorry is a potential vehicle for people smuggling.
	That context is crucial, because this country above all others has thrived, from the earliest times when Cornish tin was sold to Byzantium, on taking our opportunities across the world to buy cheap and sell dear. Our migration system must sift the illegal from the vast mass of honest trade and travel, and that is not easy.
	Migration has increased enormously, too, in the age of mass travel, and immigrants make a hugely valuable contribution to our society. I am sorry that no Member has so far stressed that. There are 11,000 overseas teachers working in British schools, and in London some 23 per cent. of doctors and 47 per cent. of nurses were born outside the UK. In many parts of the country, our public services would collapse without the dedication and commitment of many people who came to this country to make a better life for themselves, but also for us.
	Yet the evidence is that we are not getting the balance right and are failing to persuade our fellow citizens that the system is under control. Alarmingly, a poll conducted in May 2007 found that 61 per cent. of people believed that there were too many immigrants living in Britain, and almost 40 per cent. said that immigration and race relations were among the top three issues facing the country. Until 1999, that figure was consistently below 10 per cent. Net migration into the UK has risen from 47,000 in 1997 to 198,000 in 2007a substantial annual figure and a substantial increase.
	Sadly, the Government cannot say that they expected, predicted or planned that increase. When we, along with Denmark and Ireland, agreed to be the only EU countries to open our borders to workers from central and eastern Europe, the forecast was that there would be barely 52,000 migrants in four years. Instead, there were 766,000. That is possibly, in a fairly wide and crowded field, the worst Government forecast in history. There have been strains in the areas to which migrants have disproportionately come. It has affected pay rates in local labour markets and put stress on local public services for which funding allocations were based on census data rather than on more up-to-date information such as NHS enrolments.
	Before anyone jumps to the conclusion that we need to withdraw from the EU because we cannot afford such free movementI am sorry to see that the hon. Member for Castle Point (Bob Spink) is not now in his placelet us remember that that was a one-off influx that arose because we decided not to apply transitional arrangements of the kind applied by Germany, Italy, France and others. Those who wanted to migrate had only three EU countries to go to. It was our decision, not the EU's.
	The same mistake is not being made when it comes to Romania and Bulgaria, and it remains the case that our fellow citizens have availed themselves of the EU's freedom of movement provisions more than those from other countries. Some Members may remember the TV programme Auf Wiedersehen, Pet. More British citizens live in the rest of the EU than other EU citizens live here, so populist calls for EU withdrawal would be counter-productive in their own terms. Withdrawal would deprive our citizens of choice and probably lead to an increase in the UK population, and certainly to an increase in strains on the NHS.

Nigel Evans: I hear what the hon. Gentleman says, but is not part of the problem, and part of the reason for the British public's anger, the fact that they were told by the Home Office that the number who would settle here when people from the 10 new EU countries were allowed access to live and work would be something like 13,000 or 16,000? In reality it was closer to 1 million. That is why the British public felt angry at being let down.

Christopher Huhne: The hon. Gentleman was clearly asleep earlier in my speech, because I gave the precise figures. Some 52,000 migrants in four years were predicted, and in fact there were 766,000. He is absolutely right, and I had already made that point.

David Heath: He was not right about the numbers.

Christopher Huhne: Indeed, I corrected the hon. Gentleman's numbers; I thank my hon. Friend.
	If we are to maximise the benefits that migration can provide to the UK, while minimising the potential downside, we need better control of our borders. Yet the Bill does too little, too late. It was madness for the previous Conservative Government to begin to dismantle exit controls, given that we no longer have a way to check whether short-term visas are respected, and whether people issued with them return home. It was madness because we know that most illegal immigrants, contrary to what the official Opposition claim, are overstayers on legitimate visas. They did not arrive in the back of lorries.
	It was equal madness for the Labour Government to persist with the abolition of exit checks and to take such a long time to reinstate them through the e-Borders scheme. It will not be fully operational before March 2014, and this year only just over half those leaving the country will be checked. How can we stop overstaying students or temporary workers if we do not know whether they have left? The Home Office must move much further, much faster to re-establish exit checks.

Phil Woolas: I am genuinely grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who is making a superb speech and analysis. I plead with him to consider the trajectory of the roll-out of e-Borders. He is right to say that 100 per cent. will be achieved by 2014, but we will reach 90 per cent. much sooner. The remaining small ports do not allow us to achieve 100 per cent. so quickly. I hope that he will support the programme.

Christopher Huhne: I am grateful for the Minister's intervention, but as far as I remember, only 60 per cent. will be achieved by the end of this year. We could be doing much more, much faster by reintroducing manual checks, if necessary, not merely the e-Borders scheme. As the Minister knows and as the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) rightly pointed out, much of the extra baggage in the e-Borders scheme is unnecessary to its key functions, which the Liberal Democrats support.

Phil Woolas: I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman's acknowledgement: the figures are 60 per cent. this year and will be 90-odd per cent. next year. The scheme will roll out very quickly. Does he accept the Government's serious point that the arrangements with many countries are reciprocal? If we count people coming in and going out we must reciprocate, which means that there have to be some checks on us.

Christopher Huhne: How other countries apply their visa arrangements is up to them. I am merely making a common-sense point, which seems to have eluded Conservative and Labour Members for more than 10 years: if short-term visas are issued to students or those who have temporary rights to work, we need to know when they leave. If we do not know when they leave, we do not know whether the visas have been respected. That is crucial.  [Interruption.] I am happy to give way to the Minister if he wants to raise himself from a sedentary positionbut I see that exhaustion has reached such a point that he must clutch at the Dispatch Box.

Phil Woolas: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way and trying to inject some life into the debate, which is important. Given his comments, will he drop his opposition to e-Borders, and his bogus claim that it is some Big Brother database and interference with people's liberties, when it is simply a border control?

Christopher Huhne: I am astonished that the Minister has the effrontery to come to the House peddling that extraordinary line. Although the e-Borders scheme is necessary to check people who have short-term and student visas, building a massive database of the travel movements of every member of our population is unnecessary. The Government are going overboard, and will lose the argument about something that is essential by attempting to gild the lily and go far beyond what is necessary. They will throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Phil Woolas: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Christopher Huhne: I have given way so many times, but I cannot resist doing so again.

Phil Woolas: I am very grateful that the Liberal Democrat party acknowledges the desirability of electronic borders control, which it previously described as a Big Brother database. Will the hon. Gentleman now show his true European credentials and admit that if we want to count people coming into our country, we must co-operate with foreign countries in allowing them access to our data?

Christopher Huhne: The Minister is simply failing to get the point. We do not need to build a massive database of the travel movements of every citizen in this country in order to make effective exit checks on those with short-term visas and ensure that we do not have illegal overstayers. If the Minister cannot understand that simple point, all I can say is that it is time for him to make way for somebody who can.
	We also need tougher enforcement among employers, yet the Bill is silent on the subject. Such enforcement is the only effective way to curb illegal immigration once people have gained entry to this country, yet in 12 years of this Government, just 114 employers have been prosecuted for having illegal immigrants on their staff. We need greater efforts at integrationthrough language teaching, for exampleyet there is nothing in the Bill that will help. Indeed, the numbers learning English are down by 39 per cent. We need better planning for public services, yet Ministers can give no assurances on the basis of what is in the Bill.
	The chaotic nature of this Labour Government's immigration policy is the principal reason why there has been such a massive rise in animosity towards immigrants. The increasingly punitive rhetoric adopted by Ministers, not least the Minister who will wind up the debate, has led many of the general public to believe that immigration is bad for this country. Frankly, that is a tragedy. Illegal immigration is certainly bad, and we need to be tougher; but legal immigration has brought great benefits, and we should say so loud and clear. Yet the Bill is another example of such knee-jerk policy making.
	Let me turn to the detail of the Bill. Bits of it are, frankly, worrying. The route to naturalisation is being made yet longer and more complicated, with more conditions being placed upon people wishing to go down that route. Much of the Bill is widely recognised as confusing. The new functions of UK Border Agency officers in customs matters, for example, are still a puzzle. Much of the rest is left undefined, with only the promise of statutory instruments, frustrating our curiosity. That is sloppy legislation. Many who have commented on the Bill, such as Liberty and the Immigration Law Practitioners Association, have made exactly the same observations. Statutory instruments are a useful tool, but the process cannot and should not be regarded as a substitute for the proper legislative scrutiny that primary legislation receives. There is no detail to be scrutinised because everything is left to statutory instruments, so real scrutiny in this Chamber is simply impossible.
	To deal with those and other problems, the House of Lords has made some important amendments. Unfortunately, however, Ministers have already promised to get rid of them in this House, with its inbuilt majority, although I hope that that will not ensure support for absolutely any amendments that the Government see fit to introduce. Indeed, I look forward to making common cause with those on the Labour Back Benches who have expressed doubts.

Jeremy Corbyn: While the hon. Gentleman is talking about amendments, may I remind him of my intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard)which he will have heardabout the anomaly of the Chagos islanders and the unfortunate failure of the House of Lords to insert an appropriate amendment to grant justice to those who were thrown off the islands, but who, because of the bad drafting of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002, are denied the right of access to British citizenship to which all others are rightly entitled?

Christopher Huhne: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that. He will certainly have our support if he intends to table an amendment on the issue, which is an anomaly that we need to deal with.
	A national border force is necessary, but why the delay? Such a force should unite the present border control functions of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, the police and the UK Border Agency, yet the proposals as drafted in part 1 of the Bill are still a muddle. They broadly extend the current powers of UKBA staff and others, as determined by the Secretary of State, but they provide no specific details. What exactly are the general customs matters that the UKBA will have the authority to address? The extension of powers that are exercisable by immigration officials are worrying, especially when they are so ill defined. We are concerned that the new powers blur the distinction between immigration controls and criminality. We share the concerns of Liberty, for example, that part 1 sends the signal that immigrants are, by definition, criminally suspicious. In addition, we will be pressing for clarification and reassurance from the Government on exactly how long UKBA officials would be able to detain a person at their offices, as these powers caused much confusion on all sides in the Lords.
	The Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives tabled amendments on these subjectsalbeit with different detailsduring consideration of the Bill in the other place. We will seek to address the issues again in Committee, particularly with regard to giving the Independent Police Complaints Commission a remit to investigate the UKBA, given the extent of the new powers, and to the implementation of our own integrated border force, as previously discussed.
	Part 2 amends the rules on naturalisation. Again, we have some concerns. The new rules will make naturalisation more difficult to achieve, but many of the details are absent. We do not yet know what types of visa will mean that a stay would qualify as time spent towards achieving naturalisation. Similarly, the eight or five years residency requirements to be eligible for naturalisation can be amended by secondary legislation under clause 42(2), providing no certainty at all for those embarking on the process. I very much take the point made by Conservative Back Benchers about the transitional arrangements, for those who had expected their naturalisation to be able to continue, under clause 39. We will definitely support the retention of that measure in the Bill.
	The extension of the qualifying period for naturalisation is likely to have a detrimental effect on community relations, and will place applicants in difficult circumstances if they are denied access to mainstream benefits and services for longer periods. This is particularly true of asylum seekers, who are largely neglected by the Bill. We will continue to push for further changes to the Bill, to ensure that time spent in Britain by refugees prior to the determination of their claims will count as part of the qualifying period.
	The introduction of a formal volunteering process is a cause for concern. Is it right that migrants should be expected to do more than those born with British citizenship? Again, the Bill does not specify what types of activity will qualify as counting towards citizenship. Neither does it address the inherently discriminatory aspects of the proposals. People in cities will find it much easier to volunteer than those living in remote communities, for example. The hon. Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard) has also made the point about people who are involved in shift work or have problems for reasons of health or of family circumstances.
	The process will be an administrative nightmare, too. How will the Government track what has been done and what has not? How will they ensure that people are not bypassing the system, as we have seen happen with tier 4 of the points-based immigration system, and that there is not an explosion in the number of so-called bogus colleges? The Government's track record on managing this type of project does not inspire confidence. We do not want or need a whole new bureaucratic system to deal with voluntary activities when, by their very nature, they should be voluntary.

Tom Brake: Does my hon. Friend agree that the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard) has already identified a potential problem with bogus voluntary organisations? An organisation to accredit voluntary organisations will no doubt be needed, thereby introducing another layer of bureaucracy into the system.

Christopher Huhne: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. He is absolutely correct.
	Part 3 is much amended from its original form, and much improved. The effective abolition of the common travel area with Ireland was unnecessary and without rationale, and it may have breached human rights. We very much support the new proposals, which maintain the system of open borders on air and sea routes between the UK and the Republic of Ireland that has been in position since partition in 1921.
	Similarly, my noble Friend Lord Smith of Clifton inserted a very sensible protection against what the Immigration Law Practitioners Association has described as mission creep, which prevents any provision relating to immigration control for persons entering, or seeking to enter, the UK by land from being made by Order in Council. We will fight for these changes to be maintained through the Bill's journey in this House.
	There are of course some welcome features in a Bill this long. Clause 56 in part 4, which widens the definition of exploitation in the offence of human trafficking, is a positive move for the protection of children. Further measures to introduce a duty to ensure the protection of children in relation to immigration, asylum or nationality are again welcome, although widening those measures to cover children when outside the UK may also be desirable.
	In total, this is a disappointing Bill. It is disappointing because it fails to rise to the challenges of an absolutely crucial field of policy. It defers difficult decisions to later statutory instruments and it panders to populism by making naturalisation more cumbersome and difficult. The Bill also represents a series of missed opportunities in failing to accelerate the reintroduction of exit checks, to address illegal immigrants or to reform the asylum system. We will not vote against the Bill tonight because we welcome the provisions to allow a more effective attack on child trafficking, but we sincerely urge Ministers to look again at the many holes that it still contains.

Keith Vaz: It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne), the shadow Liberal Democrat spokesman.
	We do live in very interesting times and although we have had no announcement from the Home Office, I am taking my lead from the shadow Home Secretary in assuming that the Home Secretary is going to stand down. When he paid tribute to her, she did not jump to the Dispatch Box and tell him that he was wrong. Although the Home Secretary is no longer in her place I, too, want to take the opportunity to pay tribute to her, as this is going to be her last outing at the Dispatch Box in her current role.
	My right hon. Friend has been and is the first woman Home Secretary and she has done an excellent job. It is a very tough job, as her successors will find out. Perhaps for no other job than Prime Minister is the patience of a secular saint so required on account of the huge amount of work that has to be done. Every single hour of the day, something is happening in respect of this portfolio, which covers policing, immigration, justice, home affairs, the European dimension and counter-terrorism.
	My right hon. Friend has always been extremely helpful to the Home Affairs Committee. I see in his place the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), another member of the Committee, and other members have been coming in and out of the Chamber. Whenever called to give evidence, the Home Secretary has been there, and she has always been transparent, open and honest. We have disagreed on many aspects of policy, particularly on the issue of police pay when matters became pretty robust, but on all other issues, my right hon. Friend has proved open and able to engage in all sorts of discussions with us. We are very grateful for what she has done.
	The Home Secretary goes at the top of her game. Her moving on came as a surprise to me, but I know that she will make a contribution to other aspects of public life and, indeed, to the life of Parliament as she continues to be an MP. I hope that the Minister for Borders and Immigration will pass on the good wishes from me and from the rest of the Houseand I mean from all political parties.
	I also want to address a few words to the Minister for Borders and Immigration. When I tried to praise him this morning, he felt that it was a precursor to my then having a go at him, but on the issue that we have engaged with most recentlythe GurkhasI must say that the Select Committee, and, indeed, the whole House is grateful for his handling of that particular aspect of immigration policy. We know that this is a difficult policy area and we understood where the Government were coming from.
	The House made its views known and the Minister stood at the Dispatch Box before the House rose that evening to ask the Select Committee and Parliament to engage in a discussion about how to resolve the issue. It seemed to me unusual that a Minister was prepared to start that engagement process at such short notice, and he was absolutely true to his word. His officials and those of the Ministry of Defence met the Committee and Ms Lumley and the process started. Within a very short time, a Select Committee report was issued. I know that the Minister is not going to repeat this every time we write a Select Committee report, but on this occasion, he accepted our findings in full within 48 hours.
	I would like to emphasise to the Minister that that sort of can-do attitude is precisely what we would like to see adopted for immigration policy. I believe that he still has it in himI am making a prediction here and I stress that the Prime Minister will not be consulting me about the reshuffleand I very much hope that he will still be in the same job this time next week. Saying that may well have damned his career and the Prime Minister, who I am sure is watching these proceedings, may well want to move him on. The Minister has made a very good start. He has been open, honest and transparent, as he was with the Select Committee this morning. He has admitted the existence of real problems in, previously, the immigration and nationality directorate and, now, the Border and Immigration Agency. He has set out his stall and made clear the ways in which he believes these matters can be resolved.
	The Minister and I will still disagree about the backlog. I still believe that when he finishes his job, whenever that will beI hope that it will be many months and years from nowhe will be judged by me, and by colleagues such as my hon. Friends the Members for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard) and for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn), who have been in the House for longer than I have, on the basis of the length of the backlog. At the moment, I can give him only five out of 10 in that respect.

Jeremy Corbyn: Does my right hon. Friend share my experience of being inundated with visitors to the advice bureau who have been told that they must wait another two years before their backlog cases can be dealt with? Many people who come to see us are absolutely desperate to know what will happen to their lives. Some have been waiting five years, 10 years or even longer. That is not a decent way in which to treat anyone.

Keith Vaz: My hon. Friend is entirely right. If Lin Homer did not exist to sign the letters, we would have to invent her. A letter from the chief executive will arrive after the busy surgery on a Friday, saying that it will take two years to resolve these matters. When the Minister came to the Dispatch Box and agreed to resolve the issue of the Gurkhas within a very short time, there was the political will and the can-do attitude. All cases would be dealt with by the end of May, and all pre-1997 cases would be dealt with within two years.
	All Members, in all parts of the House, have received the famous Lin Homer letter that says Don't write to us, because we are resolving it. When are you resolving it? In two years' time. That is the fundamental problem of the way in which the immigration system has developed over the past 20 yearscertainly from the moment when I entered the House. Yes, it has improved because the backlog has been reduced, but there is still a backlog which could have been cleared, at least in the last 12 years, if the Government had wanted to clear it. I know that a lot of resources have been devoted to dealing with the backlog, but I fear that the Bill will create a bigger backlog. I fear that people will to be made to jump through even more hoops in order to gain citizenship and stay in the country, and that the path to citizenship will be littered with more obstacles and hurdles.
	I understand perfectly well why the Government, and Parliament, have decided to take this action. That is why I shall vote for the Bill, as I have voted for every other immigration Bill that the Government have presented in the last eight years. Although it will mean that genuine people must wait longer, we will support the Government's action. However, there is a deal. We will take the harsh medicine, but in return for what we are doingsupporting a Bill that I would never support if this were a Conservative Government and I were a Labour Back Bencher: we would be jumping up every five minutes objecting to what the Conservatives were doingthe Minister must deliver the proper, effective and efficient immigration system which has still not been delivered by the Government after 12 years.

David Heath: I suppose that I should admire the right hon. Gentleman's loyalty in supporting all those Bills, but does he not agree that it would be far better if the Home Office could desist for just one year from producing nationality and immigration Bills, and instead get on with managing the Department as effectively as possible in order to make it run properly?

Keith Vaz: The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. If only we could be guaranteed thatbut there is clearly a whole section of the Home Office that needs legislation so that Ministers are kept busy.
	When the Minister has been confirmed in his positionI fully support that, and will be happy to write a recommendation letter to the Prime Ministerhe should relocate himself to Croydon. He should go there on MondayI hope that Monday will not be too latewith all the clever, bright people whom he has brought to meetings on the Gurkhas and to meet the Select Committee, and he should sit there until the backlog is cleared. With ministerial will, he can do it.

Christopher Huhne: The right hon. Gentleman's proposal is extremely interesting. Will he suggest to his Committee that it should meet for several sessions in Croydon, in order to deal with precisely this issue?

Keith Vaz: We frequently go to Croydon, but we do not necessarily get to see what we ought to see; I have found that people are very nice to Select Committees, but we still get the information that we need from the statistics, and the statistics are poor.
	I know that the Minister often says that mistakes have been made, as he did in respect of bogus collegesif he is frowning at me, he need not, because that is the best he can do. Hundreds of bogus colleges were brought into existence under this tough Government doing tough things on immigration. As one of our witnesses said this morning, people can set up a college above a fish and chip shop anywhereeven in Oldhamand they will be able to get someone into this country. That is what the universities told us today. Over the past 12 years, hundreds of bogus colleges have been set up and tens of thousands of bogus students have entered this country.
	The Minister appeared before the Committee today and said, with his usual robustness and honesty, that he knows about what has happened in the past but that we now have the points-based system, which is the great panacea, and that if we open the bottle called the points-based systemthe most fantastic thing the world has ever seen, and certainly the most fundamental review of immigration policy since the second world wareverything will be fine and calm. We then presented him with a letter from Baroness Warwick, who represents Universities UK, which points out that the very organisations that conduct the accreditation have websites that do not list either their inspectors or the institutions they have visited.
	We accept that the Minister comes with good will to the House, as he came with good will to the Select Committee, and we give him the benefit of the doubt as we know he wants to sort out this problem, but we say to him that time is running out. It is not legal immigration that we are concerned about, and I do not think the people of this country are concerned about that either; they would agree with what the hon. Member for Salisbury (Robert Key) said earlier about clause 39 and those people who have come to this country legitimately with their skillsdoctors and others were mentionedto benefit our country. Of course, they have been benefited as individuals, but they have also benefited our country, and they might now be told that they cannot get citizenship or they will have to waitI know this does not apply to those people who currently have indefinite leavefrom five to eight years, and from three to five years, and in between this wait, they will have to satisfy various criteria. We even accept that, but what we cannot accept is what the Home Secretary said today about a cap being placed on citizenship. It is no good the Minister looking at me as he is now; that is precisely what she said at the Dispatch Box today, having said all along that we do not accept the notion of a cap. She was talking in response to my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), and she said that there would be a cap on citizenship. That is something that the Minister himself originally said when he first took up his post; he talked about a certain level of population in this country, and then said that was not the case and that he had never mentioned a cap.
	If we are to have a new, points-based system for citizenship, the House needs to know about it. We do not need to be told, as if we are children, that this is a framework document and that some time in the futurein the summeranother consultation document will be published. The Minister must be fair to the House. In his wind-up, he needs to answer what has been put by the shadow Home Secretary, the Liberal Democrat Home Affairs spokesman and my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow. If there is something in a drawer in Lunar house on a new consultation on a points-based system for citizenship, we have a right to know what that is; we have a right to know what it is before we vote through this Bill on Second Reading, and certainly before Report and when it comes back in the final Session.
	I ask the Minister to be open and honest with the House. We know there are problems. We know that the public will not accept unlimited immigrationthe kind of immigration that brought me and the people who arrived on the Windrush into this country. Those days are, of course, completely gone. I am also thinking of those of my constituents whom Idi Amin expelled from Uganda and who came here from east Africa; people will never be accepted in those numbers now. Those who have come since then have all been EU citizens who have an absolute right to come here, and some of them have, in fact, returned. People do not mention the fact that they have preferred to go back to their eastern European countries because, for the moment, their economies are doing slightly better than oursalthough I am sure they will all come back again when our economy is fully repaired.
	That fact is that there is no mass immigration in Britain any morethe Minister knows thatbut there is the illegal immigration that is so blighting our country, and we want him and this Government to do much more about that. I know that he does not like guessing the number of illegals, but he has clever officials, so he should sit them down and ensure that we get the figures. The Mayor of London has the figures and at least he has a solution to dealing with illegal immigrationthe amnesty. We need to deal with this issue, and not just at the border.
	The Minister, as well as being responsible for immigration, is the acting entry clearance Minister, for the time being, so he knows that there is also a problem with that. I was aghast to hear of the number of students who come from Pakistan in particular, although as I said to the high commissioner last week, this is not an issue just for Pakistan because many countries are involved. The relevant numbers are 7,000 five years ago and 26,000 now. The journalist who wrote the report in  The Times told us about these bogus colleges in Manchester that are supposed to admit only 50 such students but had 1,700 on the roll. These are serious issues and the Border and Immigration Agency must investigate them.
	We take all the Minister's tough medicine today in saying to our constituents and those who seek to come here, I am sorry that you must wait longer to become a British citizen and you have to do all these things: you have to obey the law, of course, and you have to be able to speak English. We accept everything that is being put upon a community such as mine in Leicester, where half the population has origins abroad. We accept all that, but in return we want the Government to do more to tackle illegal immigration, so that those who come legally will be treated properly.

Tom Brake: I think that the right hon. Gentleman was about to conclude, but before he moves off the subject of tough medicine may I ask whether he agrees that perhaps, even for UK citizens, the tough medicine goes a little too far when it involves children in immigration detention centres? Does his immigration deal address that issue with the Minister?

Keith Vaz: I am happy to have given way to a member of the Select Committee. He is right in what he says, and it applies not only to children. Those who come to our surgeries, including the Minister's surgery in OldhamI am so pleased that he is in this job, because every Friday he knows what the problems arediscuss not only children in detention centres, but people waiting for years for Miss Homer and her wonderful team to settle these cases. These people cannot work, as has been said by my hon. Friends the Members for Walthamstow and for Islington, North in every immigration debate that I have attended. We do not give these people the right to work. We keep them in destitution for four years because of our administrative inefficiency and eventually we ask them to leave. As we speed up the processing of those cases, we have to find a compromise that will allow them at least to take up work while their cases are being considered.
	I take the point about my almost concluding as a hint that I should do so. A number of hon. Members have discussed the nature of active citizenship and the path to citizenship, and the Select Committee touched on that in its report on this Bill. May I remind the Minister of the reason why we had to conclude our investigation and then report? When this Bill was originally published the Minister did not know what was going into it, so we had no detail. A broad-brush approach was being taken and there was no detail for the Select Committee to scrutinisethat is why we had to conclude. As there was no information to allow us to scrutinise what the Government were proposing in the Bill, there was no point in our continuing our work and so we published our report.
	The Committee said that it was extremely worried about this notion of active citizenship. Who is an active citizen? Are we putting on immigrants to this countrywho choose to come here to become British citizensa greater burden than we put on our own citizens? Are we going to ask such people to be better citizens than those born in this country? I was not born in this country, but my son and daughter have been born here. Does that mean that if I did not have citizenship when I came here I would have had to do more than someone who was born here? That is the problem with creating two classes of citizenship. Of course it is a great privilege to be a British citizen. My father and mother always wanted to be British citizens, and they wanted the same for their children. In a sense, those who come here as immigrants respect this country much more, because they know what a privilege it is to stay here. We need to address these issues, and people need to know what they must do in order to gain citizenship.

Kerry McCarthy: I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way just as he was about to rise to a crescendo at the end of his speech. Does he share my concern about those young people whose parents are long-term overstayers? I have a significant number in my constituency. The parents are mainly from Jamaica, and the children were born in this country. I met one young woman who did not even realise that she was not a British citizen until she applied to study English at university and was told that she would be classed as an overseas student. She was also told that she had to take the English language test and other tests, which would be a bit of a farce. Does he share my concern that if such people have to jump through various hoops to become British citizens, they will get entirely the wrong message?

Keith Vaz: My hon. Friend is right. We have to have rulesnot everyone can arrive and suddenly become a British citizen. That does not happen in the USpeople need a green card. If someone then commits a criminal offence, they are removed or do not get citizenship. However, we do need to be very compassionate in how we deal with such situations, especially when it comes to peoplemany from the Caribbeanwho have lived here for many years, since Windrush, and have not bothered to get a passport or any documents and therefore have never become naturalised.
	The Minister was very proactive in responding to my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow, who talked about the possibility of bogus voluntary organisations being created to provide certificates to prove to the Home Office that people had done their active citizenship service. We need to be careful about that and not just put that provision through on a statutory instrument. We should consult the public and Parliament, and we should then come up with criteria of which we can all be proud when we invite people to become equal citizens with us in this country. The Minister has given similar assurances in the past, which we have accepted readily and gladly, and we want to see that happen in this case.
	There is still much work to be done on this Bill, and I hope that it will be improved in Committee. I hope that the Minister stays true to his promise to be open to suggestions so that we have a robust system, as we all want, and so that people who come here legally are properly treated, and those who come illegally, who are not asylum seekers and have no right to be here, are removed. It must also be a fair system so that we can retain the values that have made us one of the greatest countries in the world.

Nigel Evans: It is always a delight to follow the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee. He mentioned those who were born here who now wish to be naturalised and the requirements that they have to meet. Clause 41(3)(d) requires that a person has
	sufficient knowledge of the English, Welsh or Scottish Gaelic language.
	I am not sure that anybody coming to live in Wales or Scotland will have English and Scottish Gaelic or Welsh.
	Another requirement is that a person
	has sufficient knowledge about life in the United Kingdom.
	I suspect that some people who were born in the UK would fail some of the questions asked of people who wish to come and live here. It is good to have such tests, and to expect people to integrate, to be able to communicate in the language of the country and to know about our customs and how things work, but it struck me as odd that we might be setting a much higher hurdle for those coming here than for those who happen to be born here. Perhaps we should consider setting such tests in schools, and ensuring that people can pass them.

Pete Wishart: The hon. Gentleman would have already failed that test. It is not Scottish gay-lic but Scottish Gaelic. I have taken the testit is available on most of the social networking sites and I invite hon. Members to have a go; I failed. Perhaps it should come as a badge of honour for me, as a Scottish nationalist, to fail a Britishness test, but the test is very difficult. It would be worth while for hon. Members to have a go at it.

Nigel Evans: That says it all. My error would mean that I could not go and live in Scotland, and the hon. Gentleman's error would mean that he should not really be here. Perhaps, if he accepts my part of the dealwe will see.
	This is an important debate. Immigration is clearly high in the minds of a lot of people at the moment, particularly at a time of recessionno one has mentioned immigration yet. Immigration is always on people's minds, but when the economy is booming it is less of a priority for a lot of people. Now, of course, there is a recession. Unemployment is high and it is growing. A lot of people look at immigration and see it as part of the problem. They think that they are unable to get jobs because so many people are coming here.
	Let me return to the issue of the EU and the 10 countries that came in. Whereas Germany, France and the majority of the other countries had derogations to protect their economies, which allowed them to control who was coming in, as we have now done with Romania and

Phil Woolas: Bulgaria.

Nigel Evans: And Bulgaria. We have derogations in those cases, and I still think that we should have had derogations with those 10 countries, too. That might at least have made it somewhat easier.

Keith Vaz: I am surprised at the hon. Gentleman for saying that. Does he not believe that since enlargement the arrival of eastern Europeans from Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic has helped to boost our economy? Since the downturn, many of them have returned. Those who have stayed have filled jobs that they want to fulfil.

Nigel Evans: I will come back to that point in a moment. I just think that we should have been on an even keel with all the other countries in the EU. There should have been some consistency. It does not take a rocket scientist to see that if we and one other country had no derogations, we would be the major recipients of people coming from those 10 countries. However, I shall say more about that in a while.
	The Government have passed seven pieces of immigration legislation since they came to power. With that in mind, I want to express my disappointment that despite acknowledgment on both sides of the House and in another place that our immigration laws are already extremely complicated, the Home Secretary has produced yet another layer of proposals. Indeed, the former Immigration Minister, the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr. Byrne), said:
	This complexity reduces the efficiency of decision-making processes, resulting in delay and the risk of mistakes.
	The principle, therefore, of a consolidatory or simplification Bill as proposed in July 2008 by the draft immigration and citizenship Bill was, I believe, welcomed. The Loyal Address made no mention of such a codifying Bill and so here we are today, wading through yet more supplementary legislationthe eighth time we have done so in the past 12 years.
	I recognise that there are a variety of issues to discuss but, conscious of time, I shall limit myself to the proposals, or lack thereof, that cause me most concern. On immigration in general, we all need to recogniseparticularly when we have EU and local authority elections coming upthat immigration should not be used as a tool by any political party just for party gain. I am clearly thinking about one particular partythe British National partyand about the UK Independence party to a lesser extent. I think that their views are not the best as far as a healthy economy is concerned, nor as far as people who wish to come and reside here legitimately are concerned. We should stress that. The debate about immigration must be sensible and grounded.

Kerry McCarthy: Will the hon. Gentleman join me in condemning UKIP for its policy of putting huge billboards in areas of quite high immigrationit certainly does so in my constituencystating Say no to unlimited immigration? We certainly do not have unlimited immigration in the UK, and I can see that the only purpose is to stoke up resentment in those communities.

Nigel Evans: I know exactly what UKIP is doing, but I believe that the Government are partly responsible for not grasping the immigration problem earlier. That has given UKIP and the BNP an opportunity to use it as an argument against mass immigration into this country. If only the problem had been tackled years ago, I do not think that the attraction of those parties would be as high as we are led to believe in the national press.
	There is no denying, as the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee has said, that immigration can be a boost to the economy, providing a highly skilled work force. We have seen that, in particular, with the Polish plumbers. Their skill is superb and people talk about them as a great asset to the country. Some people resent the fact that such workers have gone back to Poland or whatever country they came from. That was the difference in reaction between France and Britain. Britain was quite pleased, whereas France was not pleased about skilled workers coming into the country.

Keith Vaz: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way a second time. Of course, he will know that it was not just plumbers who came from Poland.

Nigel Evans: The tabloids used them as an example of what was happening. Clearly, a lot of other skilled people came from within the EU.
	The Government estimate that there are up to 570,000 illegal immigrants in the UK. However, according to Migrationwatch UK a study by the London School of Economics in March 2009 suggested an estimate of more like 725,000, of whom 518,000 are based in London. Those figures prompt the question why on earth the Government have not included proposals to create an integrated border police capable of tackling this problem at source. That way, we would have sworn officers who could be recognised as such by the public. I would be interested to hear the Home Secretary's reasoning against a proposal that seems to go hand in hand with the Government's intention. The Government want to tighten up border security but do not want to be seen to use a Conservative initiative that would prove effective.
	A border police force would have all the necessary powers to arrest, detain and prosecute offenders. Only such a fully integrated border police force will allow the development of specialist skills in fighting people trafficking, illegal immigration, and drug smuggling. Illegal immigrants, however, are part of a wider issue of population. The Office for National Statistics predicts that the population will increase by 4.4 million to 65 million by 2016 and reach 71 million by 2031. Immigration is expected to contribute some 47 per cent. of that growth. Is such growth acceptable and when will the Government wake up to the reality of the situation and institute plans that the Conservatives have suggested for annual limits on economic migration?
	That aspect has been neatly summed up by the all-party group on balanced migration, which has stated:
	There are two litmus tests for immigration policy. First, it needs to tighten up immigration controls so that British unemployed people are given a fair crack at getting jobs. Second, it needs to control immigration so that the UK's population does not hit 70 million in 2028. This Bill passes neither of these tests.
	So, with regards to immigration, the Bill is a glorious opportunity spurned. The Government have not taken the chance to introduce a border police force, and they have not seriously considered an annual limit on economic migration.
	Members on all Benches, despite differences over content, would have welcomed a Bill that simplified the system. In fact, the Bill does little at all for our immigration situation save, as Migrationwatch UK has said, for
	making the task of consolidation of existing legislation yet more complicated.
	Let me turn to naturalisation and citizenship. When the Bill came before the House of Lords, there was legitimate concern over the retrospective nature of the naturalisation process on migrants already in the UK and near the end of their qualification period under the old rules. I am amazed that the Government have not taken those concerns on board, and I gather that they wanted further debate on the amendment. In my opinion, there is no debate to be had. We are simply talking about the legitimate expectation of those people who are already hereit is an issue of fairness, and I have heard what the Home Secretary has said on the matter.
	The Joint Committee on Human Rights expressed its concerns in 2007 about retrospective changes to migration rules in a report on the highly skilled migrant programme. It recently went on to say:
	We urge the Government not to repeat the unedifying spectacle of riding roughshod over migrants' legitimate expectations of settlement, which undermined many migrants' faith in the UK's commitment to basic fairness...We recommend that clear transitional provisions are made which meet the legitimate expectations of those already in the system.
	The last time that the Government ignored that Committee, the Committee's concerns regarding highly skilled migrants were subsequently upheld by the High Court, and the Government were forced to do what they had failed to be persuaded to do in the first place, namely to honour the legitimate expectations of those who had planned their future lives in the UK on the basis of the law as it stood when they came to the country. That aspect was rightly picked up again by the House of Lords, and clause 39 is now in place, which provides that nothing in part 2 shall affect an application for indefinite leave to remain or for British citizenship made prior to the date on which part 2 is commenced. The clause also provides that nothing in part 2 shall affect an application for indefinite leave to remain that is made in the 12 months after the date on which part 2 is commenced.
	My noble Friend Baroness Hanham led the argument on the issue in the other place, and her comments are equally pertinent today:
	The people who have faithfully adhered to the current rules and thought that they were firmly established on the road to citizenship should not now have the rug pulled from beneath their feet. They have an expectation of a timescale in which their naturalisation will be fulfilled.[ Official Report, House of Lords, 25 March 2009; Vol. 709, c. 705.]
	People would rightly feel angry, worried and betrayed by any retrospective moves. I have grave reservations about any retrospective legislation that would seek to punish or, in this case, place an even greater burden on people who have been following the law that the Government laid down.
	I should like to turn to the provisions on the common travel area, which is made up of the UK, Ireland, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. All nationals of those countries can travel freely within them. The Government have said that the CTA is out of date, and that the privilege of movement within the CTA may be abused by others. Although we must be aware of the potential dangers, we must be proportionatea factor of which the Government seem to have lost sight. The CTA has been of great benefit to the peoples of the whole of the British Isles since partition in 1921, and it even survived through world war two. The Government's proposal is unenforceable, as the land border between Northern Ireland and the Republic does not exist in any physical form. There are hundreds of tiny lanes with no visible indication of a border, and all the military and security installations have been dismantled. What we should be looking at, in close collaboration with the Irish authorities, is putting in place an upgraded electronic border around the whole of the British Isles.
	The Government's original suggestion in clause 46 was tantamount to the abolition of the common travel area, because the re-imposition of immigration controls would mean that entitlement to travel would have to be proven at the border, and so the panoply of immigration controls would operate there. As Justice has said,
	immigration controls should only be introduced into a previous common travel zone where a case of strict necessity (rather than mere administrative convenience) can be made out.
	The Government have manifestly failed to justify that action. The amendments put in place by the House of Lords must stand.
	The Lords Select Committee on the Constitution considered part 3 in detail. It said:
	It is clear to us that the policy-making process that has led to clause 46 (now clause 48) has not been informed by any real appreciation of the constitutional status of the Crown dependencies or the rights of free movement of Islanders.
	If the Government plan to reintroduce the provisions, perhaps the Secretary of State will tell the House what steps she and her Department have taken to rectify their lack of constitutional awareness.
	In short, I believe that the House of Lords has seen through a piece of legislation that is pretty shoddy in parts. The Bill is not brave enough to take on proposals that make sense, such as a border police force or an annual limit on economic migration, nor does it consolidate the maze of existing immigration legislation. I urge Members of all parties not to vote in favour of any retrospective legislation on naturalisation, which would be grossly unfair and disproportionate. Likewise, the Government have not made a good enough case for all but removing the CTA, and our noble Friends' amendments must stand.

Albert Owen: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans). I am sure that if he sat the citizenship test, he would do so in Welsh, and I would certainly do so, too. The last point that he raised, on the common travel area, is one that I want to explore further, but first I want to welcome many measures in the Bill. The citizenship part of it, which many people have talked about, is complex, but it is a move in the right direction, which I welcome. I also welcome part 1 of the Bill, which is about advancing the UK Border Agency. I have seen some of the successes. As I mentioned in an intervention on the shadow Home Secretary, I have watched it since its inception and seen it produce very good results in the port of Holyhead in my constituency. It is a very large port; some 2 million passengers a year travel through it, as does a lot of cargo. A lot of highly intelligent work is done in the port by immigration authorities, working with the police and the UK Border Agency.
	I very much welcome the fact that in some areas, the issue of who is responsible for what will be sorted out. I am sure that that is the intention of the Bill. Before the UK Border Agency was set up, I recall talking to both the police and Customs, and noted how concerned they were that the agency would not work with them. I think that those fears have now been allayed; the agency is working well. I talk to people in the specialist units in the port and to people at the dedicated security posts that North Wales police has in my area. Those people do an excellent job, and they are specialised, so I do not really see the need for the single, all-encompassing body that the hon. Member for Ribble Valley has mentioned. I see the police working alongside the UK Border Agency and immigration authorities. That works, and I think that it can work better in future. However, I welcome part 1, which will consider administrative areas, so as to tidy up the relationship between Customs, the UK Border Agency and the police.
	The port of Holyhead, which is in my constituency, as I have said, is the second or third-largest port in the United Kingdom. It is certainly the largest port on the western seaboard, with a considerable amount of traffic, and it is also a major employer. It has potential for growth in freight and in passengers, which will put greater burdens on the UK Border Agency and immigration authorities.
	I want to concentrate on the controversial measures to introduce immigration controls for journeys within the CTA especially with regard to journeys from the Republic of Ireland. The measures will have a profound effect on the port of Holyhead, and indeed on all Welsh ports that have historical trade with the Republic of Ireland, and that are major employers in the area. I am mindful of the balance between providing security and ensuring efficient freight and passenger movement. Getting that balance right is very tricky, but the port of Holyhead is used to striking the right balance.
	Throughout the 20th centuryfor many yearsWelsh and Irish ports have had to deal with the security implications of the Irish question, and with the movement of people predominantly by sea, and they have done that very well. The port of Holyhead is on the central corridor, and has been the favoured route to the Republic of Ireland, and for Irish people coming to the United Kingdom. There remains a high security alert today, as there was throughout the most recent Irish troubles. The port is used to dealing with those high security alerts. These days, when I visit the port, I see for myself the work done by front-line people to keep our borders secure. I pay tribute to all those involved with front-line immigration, counter-terrorism and other services, because they do an excellent job. Too often, we deal with the details of what they do, but do not give them credit for what they achieve.
	The Welsh Affairs Committee, of which I am a member, is undertaking an inquiry on Welsh ports. One of the areas that we will touch on is the CTA, so the subject is appropriate to this debate. We visited the port of Holyhead, and we intend to go to other ports in Swansea and Pembrokeshire to look at the effect that the CTA has on the economies of the western seaboard of Wales. We have talked with port operators, immigration and border agencies, and counter-terrorism units about the importance of the security measures in the CTA. This debate is timely, because I have strong concerns about the issue.
	I shall use a local example. In the port of Holyhead, there are, as I have already said, good relationships between the people at dedicated security posts, the special branch police, the UK Border Agency officers and additional UK Border Agency hit squads that deal with the area, and have done for many years. Their work is predominantly intelligence-based, but a lot of it is just carrying out spot checks on people and cargo going through the UK ports. They may also have heard intelligence, gathered either in the Republic of Ireland or on the continent, before they intervene. They have a good success rate, and that system works. It is important that we stress the fact that it does work. There are huge amounts of additional seizures. Huge numbers of lorries are intercepted, and illegal immigrants are taken out of them. The job that the UK Border Agency undertakes, working with others, has been a huge success, and I pay tribute once again to the people on the front line.
	Like all ports, Holyhead has to comply with stringent regulations. The EU security directive, which is soon to be introduced, will make it even more complex for ports to deal with EU-wide legislation. Not only UKBA and customs and immigration officers, but all staff are trained in port security. Port staff provide additional security to make the ports secure and to deal with trafficking and so on. They are all trained to international ship and port facility security code standards. The officers are paid by the port, and a considerable sum is involvedin the case of Holyhead in my constituency, it is 750,000 a year, so an additional cost would be incurred if new measures were introduced to secure the borders of the Republic of Ireland and additional immigration measures were introduced between the Republic of Ireland and Wales.
	I have outlined the significant measures that are already in place in the CTA. The Government have indeed carried out a consultation to abolish the CTA between the Republic and the UK. To be fair to them, the consultation was wide-ranging, and they listened to the concerns of industry and dropped the proposal for fixed immigration controls on all passengers and freight to and from the Irish ports. However, having listened to the Home Secretary, I am concerned that the Government intend to reintroduce the proposal, although it was defeated in the other place.
	The proposal to introduce an identity card system and passport requirements for all travellers would be an additional burden on the ports. The proposal on carrier liability, with a 2,000 fine for every passenger who fails to carry a passport or an ID card, would impose additional unnecessary burdens.
	I am slightly concerned about the imposition of e-Borders. If there were a level playing field and basic information across the whole European Union, it would be a great advantage, but I am concerned that the omission of the border between the Republic and the north will displace some of the problems and therefore hope that a level playing field will be established. I am concerned that the huge number of seizures in the ports of Holyhead and Dublin and other ports will move elsewhere as tighter regulations and measures are introduced between the Republic and the UK. People will simply drift across the border from the Republic to the north and then across to the UK without any checks. That is the real fear for many of us. It is not enough to have tight borders, as we might open the problem up somewhere else. Anyone who has recently been to the Republic of Ireland will know that the north and south are very much unified when it comes to tourism, for instance. The borders are flexible and open.

Simon Hughes: I hope that like me, the hon. Gentleman is a good rugby supporter. Many teams are all-Ireland teams, as he well knows. Does he not agree that it is nonsense to put the cart before the horse and try to deal with border controls by requiring identity checks at places such as Holyhead before holding a debate about whether we should keepI support thisthe CTA, encompassing the whole of Ireland and the whole of the UK?

Albert Owen: We have discussed this before. If the new measures on immigration control and everything else are introduced, they should apply between the Republic and the north of Ireland, or not at all. I am worried about the drift from the Republic to the north and across to Scotland.
	There is an economic argument, too. Many carriers that carry cargo to and from Ireland on a regular basis will favour the north, because it will be quicker to get through the ports. They will travel from the south to the north and over into Scotland or, indeed, the north-west of England. Welsh ports would lose out economically, and it is a serious concern, because they would face the additional cost of running the schemes proposed by the Government and a possible loss of revenue. That is why I am very worried that the Government's introduction of the measures will impact severely on the port of Holyhead.
	No one is suggesting that Welsh ports should be a soft touch, but as I have tried to demonstrate, security at ports such as Holyhead in my constituency has been tried and tested over many years. It needs to be improved further, with co-operation, as the hon. Member for Ribble Valley has said, between the Irish and UK Governments. It should be an intelligence-led national and international network. That is the way forward: we should have more ad hoc intelligence-based work at the ports, but it is important to keep the CTA as it is, for the reasons that I have given.
	Ports remain the life blood of the economy of the British Isles, and the CTA has stood the test of time. It has withstood the Irish problemswartime was the only time when it was not in place as a result of the Republic's neutrality. Since 1921, it has served well the port authorities and the security forces at the ports, which do an excellent job, and that should continue. I welcome further discussion with the Minister to try to allay the fears that I have raised on behalf not only of port owners but of people who work on the front line at the port of Holyhead in my constituency and at many other Welsh ports.

Pete Wishart: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Ynys Mn (Albert Owen). Occasionally, I have used the ferry from his constituency across to IrelandI always enjoy a little excursion across the Irish sea. From these Benches, may we pay tribute to the Home Secretary, who is expected to depart from the Home Office? She has always been fair and courteous to members of the minority parties. Her predecessor went on to become chair of Celtic football club in GlasgowI do not know whether there is a vacancy in the other half of the old firm or whether it is something in which she is interested, but I am sure that she will have a fine career ahead of her when she steps down.
	These debates have a depressing familiarity to them. We hear, primarily from Conservative Members, about all the problems and issues to do with the overheated south-east of England and why there is a need for further immigration controls and a cap on numbers. On the other side, we hear about half-hearted measures to frustrate and thwart migrants to the UK and occasionally, from me, there is a little voice trying to say, Well, let's think about the other nations of the United Kingdom, because they never get a look in at all. England may indeed be overheating in terms of immigration, but Scotland is suffering structural depopulation. We are being served by a UK immigration policy that goes nowhere near meeting our specific requirements and needs.
	Our population will fall below the iconic 5 million mark by 2017. By 2041, the population of Scotland may in fact fall to 4.5 million. At the same time, the population of England is expected to grow by about 10 million, but we will lose 0.5 million people. We are not the only country to suffer from structural depopulation, as many European nations are facing the same issues and challenges. The only difference between those nations and us is the fact that they can do something about it: they can design immigration policies to try to counter those problems and put in place a system that will see them through. We cannot do that. Doubly worse is the fact that we have an immigration policy designed for another nation that faces exactly the opposite range of problems and challenges. We have to try to make our way through thatno wonder that we do not have a chance of trying to address our particular challenges.
	If there is one thing that separates Scotland from the rest of the United Kingdom, it is immigration, and if there is one thing that we cannot fix, it is the demographic challenge facing our population. If we do not do so, however, we will face severe challenges and problems, which will impact on our entire society. There will be an impact on our economy, because there will be fewer people to do the vital jobs; depopulation will impact on our social services, because there will be fewer people working for them; and it will impact all the way through Scottish society and our community. We need Scottish solutions to a distinct Scottish problem, but we just cannot provide them because we do not have the powers, the instruments or the means at our disposal to try to address that problem.
	The Bill falls within a range of measures designed to address UK immigration issues. None of them has served Scotland. The latest wheeze is the points-based system, which will make matters worse in Scotland. As the Minister and Members who have taken part in the debate know, the proposed system is almost identical to the Australian points-based system, save in one key regardthe Australian system allows for the devolution of immigration powers to individual state Governments. They can set their own criteria for allowing immigrants to come into those specific states if they fail the general Australian criteria.
	States such as Tasmania, South Australia and Victoria, which face the same sort of challenges as Scotland, can allow people in and have their needs met. Prospective immigrants who fail to meet the criteria elsewhere in Australia have the opportunity to go to those states, helping them significantly with their demographic challenges. What we would do to have that in Scotland! What we could achieve if we were able to do that!
	We would be able to address some of our problems with even limited devolution of immigration power. We could try and turn things around, address our structural population decline and start to deal with some of the serious problems that we will face down the line, which will impact on our economy and our community. Why, oh why, when we copy the Australian system, can we not copy that key facet and allow Scotland and the other nations of the United Kingdom to try and make some sense of the difficulties confronting them? I do not get it at all. The Australian system is a fine system. Why not go the whole hog, make sure that we copy every facet of it, and give us a break? We need a break because we have severe problems.
	The points-based system gets in the way of the little bit of competitive advantage that we had with skilled migrants. We had a Fresh Talent initiative which gave us a slight advantage over the rest of the UK, because we were able to attract some skilled migrants to Scotland, but that has gone. Tier 4 has subsumed all that. The whole of the UK now has the same sort of structure as we had under Fresh Talent, so the slight advantage that we had in attracting skilled migrants is gone. Scotland now has no advantage whatever.
	The points-based system is also getting in the way of retaining skilled migrants in Scotland. I cite the example of my constituent, Swarthwick Salins. The Minister might remember the caseit was all over the Scottish newspaperswhich arose in my constituency of Perth. A respected academic, with a PhD from St. Andrews university, and a pillar of the community, he was going to get booted out for the sake of 80. For the lack of a measly 80, he was to be separated from his three Perth-born children and booted out.
	Swarthwick Salins was on tier 4 and he satisfied all the other points-based criteria when it came to assessing whether he could remain in Scotland, other than the financial criterion. When the UK Border Agency got round to looking at his bank account, he had only 721 for two weeks, whereas he required 800. On that basis, he was to be booted out. Swarthwick Salins is exactly the type of person we want to come to Scotland. He is the type of person that we need. Instead of booting him out and harassing him, we should be attracting him to Scotland. We should be saying, We need you here, and we should be doing all we can to retain him, but instead we try and boot the man out. What a shambles.
	It took a community campaign and the intervention of the First Minister of Scotland, working in my office, to have that ridiculous decision reversed. Thank goodness it was. I am beginning to wonder how many other Swarthwick Salins are being harassed like that in Scotland. It is not good enough. We need to make sure that we do something about it.
	We are supposed to have some sort of advantage as a result of the Migration Advisory Committee's list of professions that are allowed to come to Scotland, over and above those allowed into the rest of the United Kingdom. Which professions has the council selected for us? Fish processors and fish filleters. Those are all we get selected as preferred professions, and that is supposed to address some of the massive issues facing us. It is as pathetic as putting a finger in a dam. It gives us no competitive advantage.

Phil Woolas: I am sorry the hon. Gentleman is ridiculing the fish filleters. We included that profession in response to representations. I would be interested in looking at the idea of Scottish skills. We have had meetings with the Scottish Government about that, and the Migration Advisory Committee will consider that issue.

Pete Wishart: I am grateful to the Minister for that positive contribution. I hope he is sincere. I would be delighted to meet him and go over some of the issues. There are things that can be done, as the Australian points-based system has demonstrated. There are ways in which the Minister and his Department could aid us. All it requires is the will and the determination to get it right. If he wants to work with me and our party to try and achieve that, I am more than happy to do so.
	The Minister seems to be pointing to the hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green). Perhaps that is an invitation to the official Opposition too. Work with us. Help us. For goodness sake, we have issues and problems. The Minister and his shadow have the opportunity to solve them, and I challenge both of them to work with us and help us resolve some of the problems. Let us see if we can make a difference to the problems that face us.
	That brings us to what is proposed in the Bill. Will it help Scotland? No, it will not make a blind bit of difference. It is just another Bill to frustrate and thwart people who are trying to secure permanent status in the United Kingdom. All it does is make smaller hoops for them to jump through and a higher bar for them to get over. It is not trying to improve the situation for any constituent part of the United Kingdom.
	The phrase earned citizenshipwhat a phrase!suggests that migrants must prove their worth. The implication is that they are automatically a less deserving or less trustworthy group than those who are born in Britain. There is also the idea of probationary citizenship, which is an entirely new concept to me. It suggests an immigration limbolandan immigration neverland, if you like.
	Then there is the proposal for enforced volunteering for those wishing to obtain citizenship. I thought volunteering meant offering one's services free, without any sort of force. The whole idea of volunteering has been turned on its head by the concept of earned citizenship. It is a potentially dangerous and damaging proposal.
	There are changes in the number of days a person applying for naturalisation will have to be present in the UK for each year of the qualifying period. That, again, will make a difference to people who are trying to get in. All this is designed to frustrate people trying to get UK citizenship. The basis of the Bill seems to be the hope that people will be so frustrated and thwarted by the whole process that they will go away. The Bill tries to put them off, not to improve our immigration status.
	It is the impact on refugees that I find most concerning. All the language about earning the right to stay and probationary periods runs totally counter to the spirit of the UK Government's commitment to protect refugees and to fulfil their obligations under the refugee convention and the European convention on human rights. Granting long-term secure protection to refugees who are fleeing persecution and whose lives are sometimes in danger is inconsistent with the idea that refugees must earn that protection, and it goes against article 34 of the UN convention, which requires signatory states to encourage or facilitate naturalisation.
	Massive issues remain about the welfare of asylum seekers, particularly those with children. We heard some fine remarks from Labour Members about that. There is widespread revulsion at the locking up of children, dawn raids on asylum-seeking children in Scotland and their detention in the former prison of Dungavel. We had assurances from the Secretary of State for Scotland that the detention of asylum seekers' children would end, but in the past couple of weeks another Ivory Coast family were subject to not quite a dawn raid, because such raids now take place 15 minutes after dawn, and rounded up and put in the Dungavel detention centre.
	That was the case of the Gaye family in Scotland, who are awaiting deportation back to the Ivory Coast. That should never have happened. The child has already been treated for post-traumatic stress disorder caused by previous interaction with the UK Border Agency. I have seen a letter from the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), who is now Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, saying that any asylum seeker and any asylum seeker's child who are subject to any medical intervention or casework should not be subject to deportation. That seems to go counter to what is happening in that case.
	I know that Members of the Scottish Parliament have written to the Minister about the case, but they have not even had the courtesy of a reply. That was about two weeks ago. They were told that they would get a reply within five days. Nothing. They got back in touch again. Nothing. When will the Minister get round to replying to those people about the Gaye case? The case is getting wide publicity in Scotland and causing anxiety and concern about what is happening to such families.
	Also in the past week, we found out that another family were subject to a near-dawn raid and to detention in Dungavel, so the assurances from the Secretary of State for Scotland are worth nothing at all. Scotland wants an end to dawn raids and to detention in Dungavel. That is what was promised and that is what should now be delivered.

Julie Morgan: Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that clause 57, which will put the welfare of the child first, is likely to make a great deal of difference to the situations that he describes? Is it not to be welcomed?

Pete Wishart: Absolutely. I do welcome that provision, but let us just do it; let us not just talk about it and include it in legislation. We have already had assurances that there will be no further detention of children in Dungavel, but it still goes on, so I shall believe it when I see it. There are solutions, however; the hon. Lady is right, and I am pleased about that aspect of the Bill.
	In Scotland, we are trying to develop our own Scottish solution, because there has been widespread revulsion throughout the community at the detention of children. Colleagues in the Scottish Government have been trying to address the situation, and they have worked with the UK Border Agency and Glasgow city council on a family return scheme. Instead of dawn raids and detention, the scheme puts a number of families into flats, where they are supported by skilled and dedicated staff who will prepare them, talk them through the issues and get them ready if they have to return to their home country. Is not that the way to deal with such cases?

Phil Woolas: I am listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman, and I understand the sentiment. We have run projects as alternatives to detention, but the problem with one project was that, of the 32 families who signed up, only one turned up at the airport. It is a serious problem. If there is not to be detention, there has to be a serious alternative. I hope that the hon. Gentleman accepts that.

Pete Wishart: I am grateful to the Minister for those remarks, and I agree about the challenges and problems that must be addressed.

Damian Green: I rise as a constituency Member, because the alternative-to-detention project that the Government started took place in my constituency and was pursued, at best, half-heartedly. It did not clearly engage any particularly serious part of the Government's thinkingif, indeed, it was a serious alternative to detention. I suspect that Members from all parts of the House want desirable alternatives to detention, but they have never been properly set out or tried. The experiment in my constituency was nothing like long enough, well resourced enough or serious enough to answer the question about whether we can have a proper alternative.

Pete Wishart: I am grateful to both Front-Bench spokesmen for their views on the matter, because it is important that we find a solution. Detention is no longer acceptable. It is certainly no longer acceptable to the people of Scotland, and we must find an alternative.
	The Scottish Government have devoted 125,000 of resources to try to make the family return scheme work. Such expenditure is required, because the current situation has to end. It is not good enough that we lock up children, put them behind bars and subject them to dawn raids; that policy must end. We should consider whatever is required to move on and create alternatives, and I am grateful for the enthusiasm of both Front-Bench spokesmen in trying to tackle the problem. There are issues, as the Minister said, but I am sure that with the right type of commitment, they can be overcome.
	I accept that immigration and citizenship tests are required to assess the quality and worth of people who apply to become UK citizens. I had a joke with the hon. Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) about the citizenship test, but I took it and it is readily available on several social networking websites, so I encourage Members to have a look at it. I failed it and, as I said to the hon. Gentleman, as a Scottish National party Member, perhaps that is no bad thing; it would probably be expected. Seriously, however, where there are references to the Welsh language and to Scottish Gaelic, as I correctly reminded the hon. Gentleman, why cannot we have a test that is more attuned to the community in which people will live? It is a UK-wide test, and token questions about Welsh and Gaelic are flung in, but people who are expected to come and live in Scotland quickly become familiar with Scottish communities, heritage and cultural values. Why cannot that test be more in line with the community in which those people will live? Why cannot it be exclusively like that?
	When minority communities settle in Scotland, they quickly identify with Scotland and become patriotic. In fact, some of the most patriotic Scots are from some of our new communities in our big cities, and we take immense pride in that. We took immense pride in the election of Bashir Ahmad as the first Scottish Asian MSP, and that is the type of contribution that we want. What is wrong with that? I ask the Minister directly and hope that he might address the question in his winding-up speech: why can we not have more national and, perhaps, regional-specific tests to secure the type of citizenship that reflects properly the communities in which people will live? There is no point in having a test that has nothing to do with the countries in which people will live.
	In conclusion, I shall not oppose the Billalthough I do not think that there will be a Division this evening, anyway, so I shall not have the opportunity to do so. I hope that when Members consider the Bill in Committee, however, they will remember that this is a United Kingdom of nations, and that our immigration policy cannot be the preserve and domain of the south-east of England, with all its issues and pressures. The policy has to get beyond Watford, and we have to start looking at the other nations. Scotland is suffering really badly, and our economy will continue to suffer unless the immigration issue is properly addressed. I therefore appeal to the Minister, and to the hon. Member for Ashford, who might get the Minister's job in the course of the next year, to think about the other nations and regions of the United Kingdom when putting through legislation, because so far it has not been good enough.

Alasdair McDonnell: Much has been said, and I have a few comments to make. This is a Bill about which I and my party have some very real concerns, but I hope to deal with them in more detail either later or on another occasion. I want to be constructive and to acknowledge some positive features of the Bill. I particularly welcome the factto which other Members have referredthat, in line with our international commitments, protections against trafficking are being extended, so that it will be an offence to traffic a very small child. The loopholes that prevented prosecutions in that area needed to be closed, and I am glad to see that the Bill, and clause 56 in particular, does that.
	I also welcome the fact that a new statutory duty is being placed on the UK Border Agency to safeguard the welfare of children. However, it must be a qualified welcome, because, in line with the UN convention on the rights of the child, it is not merely the welfare of the child that should be safeguarded; the primary consideration must be the best interests of the child.
	Unfortunately, I also have major and serious concerns about other aspects of the Bill. One of my concerns is about accountability. The Bill means that, in practice, UK Border Agency officials will have substantially increased powers, because they will be able to perform certain functions that, until now, HM Revenue and Customs officials have exercised. As I interpret the Bill, UK Border Agency officials will be able to arrest, detain, search, inspect, seize goods, impound vehicles and require third parties to give evidence. We should have no doubt that, in effect, those are policing powers, and that is why UKBA officials should be subject to police-style accountability.
	First, the officials should be subject to police and criminal evidence codes of practice. The Government have taken a step in the right direction by giving the Secretary of State the power to apply those codes to immigration officers, but the Secretary of State should not be able to pick and mix; the police and criminal evidence codes should apply in their entirety. If, for any practical or legitimate reason, separate or extra provision needs to be made, above and beyond the average for immigration, the Secretary of State should come to the House and specifically seek approval for it on a case-by-case basis.
	Secondly, immigration officers in Northern Ireland must be subject to the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland, as are ordinary police officers in Northern Ireland. The police ombudsman has become a distinguished figure in Northern Ireland and does a very good job. I remind the House that on 19 July 2006 the then police ombudsman, Nuala O'Loan, announced that the Government had asked her office to deal with serious complaints against immigration officers in Northern Ireland. That was explicitly stated in her fifth annual report.
	There is nothing revolutionary or radical in my suggestion. In the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005, provision was made to ensure that officers of the Serious Organised Crime Agency were subject to the police ombudsman. That sets the precedent, and my party and I believe that the provision should be applied to immigration officers, as the Government appeared to concede in 2006. I note that provision is made for allowing the investigating functions of the Independent Police Complaints Commission to be expanded. That is welcome. The comparable role in Northern Ireland is that of the police ombudsman, and I urge the Minister to consider some of the relevant aspects as he takes the Bill forward.
	With rights come responsibilities; if officials are to have rights, there must be an independent mechanism to hold them responsible. However, just as rights bring responsibilities, responsibilities bring rights. That is why I am concerned by the proposal for probationary citizenship. It means that for a period, a person will have the duties of citizenship without any corresponding rights, because their citizenship will be conditional. To begin with, that devalues the whole notion of citizenship. Citizenship has a widely understood meaning and we have to be careful about tinkering with it or changing it, lest we undermine it. Anybody who has citizenship is understood to have the same rights and responsibilities as anybody else, but probationary citizenship turns that concept on its head. It is, in effect, second-class citizenship. We have to be careful about that, because I do not think that the Bill intends to create second-class citizens who might never assume full citizenship.
	Some of the criteria for the acquisition of citizenship also seem unfair. For example, a person who has successfully applied for refugee status is not entitled to have account taken of the period spent awaiting that determination. Under the Geneva convention of 1951, refugee status is declaratory. Therefore refugees should be entitled to have account taken of the periodsometimes many years longfor which they were in the state awaiting a determination of their claims.
	Those who do not undertake voluntary activity of some kind will be penalised and have to wait longer to acquire citizenship. In principle, I would not take issue with that; in practice, however, I feel that I must. It is important to ensure that those with caring responsibilities, particularly women, do not find themselves severely disadvantaged; they may well become so if they are caring for families, young children or elderly parents.
	Finally, and above all, I am concerned about the whole question of the common travel area, an issue raised by many. As Members know, the only land border in these islands is that between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. There has been a common travel area for 88 years. I welcome clause 51, which was inserted in another place. It makes it clear that those arriving by landover the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republicshould not be subject to immigration control. That would safeguard the common travel area, and I hope that the Government will accept the provision in due course. There is no evidence of lax immigration control in the Irish Republicnor have the Government suggested that there is. Indeed, immigration legislation is currently going through the Irish Parliament, and in my view it represents in some ways one of the most draconian approaches in Europe; it would even make it a crime for somebody to be in the state unlawfully.
	The common travel area reflects the particular and enduring history of these islands and the desirability of ensuring free movement across the land border between us. I hope that the Government will accept the will of those in another place who inserted the clause, and continue to protect the common travel area. Like many others, I believe that it has served us well for the past 88 years. It should be safeguarded for the future.

Charles Walker: Thank you for calling me to speak in this debate, Madam Deputy Speaker. This is the third immigration Bill on which I have spoken since I became a Member of Parliament four years ago. I have a suspicion that I will be serving in Committee; I shall bring to bear the collective knowledge that I have collated in the past four years. Although this debate is not particularly well attended, it is nice to have heard so many differing views put so sensibly by colleagues on both sides of the House. Discussion of immigration is often heated. It is incumbent on us to discuss it with passion, yes, but also moderately.
	I did not go into politics to become an immigration officer. I help people with their immigration cases, but I believe that the job would be better done by people at the Home Office. Like all Members here today and many who are not, I am terribly concerned about how long it takes to process immigration cases. It can take many years for a case to be concluded, and I do not think that that is fair on those who seek to remain in this country. We need to speed up the processto be humane, if nothing elseand when people are denied the right to remain here, they should be removed quickly. If people are to have confidence in the immigration system, they have to know that it works and that a refusal will mean that the relevant person will be required to leave the country. Too often, people feel that a refusal basically means that the person concerned just disappears into the ether, never to be seen again. We need a quick and humane immigration system.
	Unlike the Minister, I am not an expert on immigration, and I know that words are easily said. However, I hope that the Minister's Government and any future Government will bring additional resources to bear on the issue. As a great nation, we owe it to our citizens to control and manage our borders. There has been great concern in my constituency, and in those of many other Members, about the porous nature of our borders. I am a great supporter of the idea of a well-funded and well-resourced border police force, which would manage and control our borders. It would stop undesirable peoplethose who want to cause this country harm, such as some whom we have seen in the past few yearsfrom getting into the country. It would also be aware of who was entering, and manage people's entry into and exit from this country. When we read the newspapers and talk to people in business, we hear too often about what happens when illegal immigrants and workers are caught: the police turn up and, basically, give them a travel warrant to Croydon. Those stories may be apocryphal, but they are out there. We need to be aware of them and of the concerns that they create, and we need to address those concerns.
	The Bill does not have all the answers; I do not think it a particularly good Bill. At least, however, the sentiment is there; at least we are trying to point in the right direction. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) said in his opening remarks, we have, unfortunately, had eight immigration Bills in the past 13 years. That suggests that we are not getting things right. What we really need is a very good immigration Bill in the near futurebut I am not sure that this is that Bill. It fills a hole at the moment, but I fear that we will be here discussing another immigration Bill in the next year or two. That might be no bad thing, because our constituents' concerns continue, and it is incumbent on us all to address those concerns; we must not only be seen to address them, but actually address them. In that way, our constituents will see a material change in how immigration is handled in this country, in how our borders are policed and patrolled and in how people are treated once they are here.
	Yes, we want to be fair; we must be fairit is a great British trait. However, when someone is denied the right to stay here we must remove them quickly, and be seen to do so. As the Minister and my party's Front Benchers recognise, we need settled communities that rub along well together. One of the concerns of the past few years, as immigration rates have increased, is that we have put some extreme stress on communities. That has created divisions and some unrestnot as much as some media commentators would have us believe, but there is nevertheless plenty to be concerned about. We in this place need to be alive to those concerns, because if we are not, there is another party that will play on them. I do not want to mention its name in the run-up to European and county council elections, but we know that it exists, and that it is very dishonest. It plays on people's very worst fears, and we must not continue to create a space that allows it to prosper. I am convinced that in the next couple of days the great British people will rise up and give that party a firm thumbs down.
	The Bill skates around the issue of population projections and how many people we want coming into this country. Undoubtedly, that concern needs to be addressed more fully than it is in the Bill. This country cannot grow its population indefinitely. It is projected that in the next 30 years we will have 80 million people living in the United Kingdom. Most of those additional 15 million people will come to the east and the south-east. I do not think that is a good thing or a sustainable model. I listened with great interest to the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), and I very much recognise his concerns about Scotland, which is crying out for peopleadditional human resources to allow it to grow and become an even greater country than it already is. The Bill does not make provision for that to happen, so his concerns were well placed. I would just say to himwithout trying your patience, Madam Deputy Speaker, as I know I frequently do when I am speaking in this Chamberthat when I retire I have every intention of moving up to his beautiful country and sitting on an island called Islay fishing and indulging in all that beautiful scenery. However, I am well aware that he is not looking for retirees but for able young and middle-aged people with skills.
	The Bill refers to points-based systemspeople earning points to come to this country. We can be a bit selfish in this country, in that we can afford to take the very best of the people who want to come here. That is a fairly ruthless approach to immigration, but it is one that we can legitimately take. The idea that immigration does not help this country is complete nonsense, and I am delighted that no Member of Parliament has put forward that thesis today. This country has undoubtedly benefited from immigration: one need only go to our hospitals and care homes to realise that. There are huge advantages to immigration, and of course we will never turn our back on those advantages.
	However, we need to be selective and to understand that there is concern about a growing population and the allocation of resources, so that when people come to this country, the existing population, regardless of their race, creed or colour, should not feel at a disadvantage. When there is strife within a community, it is often the settled immigrant population that gets it in the neck most. We need to be mindful of the people already living here and ensure that we meet their needs so that they do not feel disadvantaged by immigration.
	I am quite attracted by the idea of earned citizenship. I think this country is a great countrya fabulous country. It is not just a good country; it is a great country. It is truly the United Kingdom, with Great Britain in there somewhere. It is a great privilege to be able to come to this country and earn that passport, which is recognised around the world, and to be able to call oneself British, or Englishor Scottish, even, if one wants to do that. The idea of earned citizenship is not a bad one; it has many merits and advantages. As we know, if we have earned something we often take greater pride in it than if it is given to us. However, I am concerned about the idea of forced volunteering. Volunteering should be voluntary. It cannot be forced on someone; it has to be something that they want to do in actively deciding to give something back to their community. Although I understand the sentiment entirely, I am not sure that it sits very well in this Bill.
	If Charles Walker were Prime Minister, as he will be in a few years' time

Alistair Burt: Next week!

Charles Walker: I could well be. If I were, what would I do to allow people to earn citizenship? I would have four simple criteria. I would require people to obey the law; most reasonable English, British or Scottish people would expect that as well. I would require people to speak the language, because someone cannot participate in the life of this wonderful country and the wonderful communities that make it up unless they can speak the language. I would want people to be able to pay their wayto put something back into this great country of ours and make a contribution through taxes to the things that we really value, such as the NHS. Finallyperhaps this is the hardest criterion to meetI want people who come here wanting to be citizens of this country to embrace our valuesnot to turn their backs on their values and heritage but to embrace our values, such as tolerance, fair-mindedness, freedom to express oneself, and freedom to marry whoever one wants to marry. Those are all things that we take for granted but which make this country so speciala place that young people from around the world want to come to. Those criteria are quite testing, but not impossible. Most people should be able to meet them.
	What I love most about this country is our sense of fair play. We love people who try and people who contribute. That is a truly wonderful thing. If people who come to this country are seen to be trying and contributing, we will embrace them and make them part of our communities, and they will embrace other immigrants who come here and then in turn become part of the larger community.
	This is not a great Bill, and I think that we will have another immigration Bill in due course. I hope that if there is a future Conservative Government, we will have only one such Bill, or perhaps two, in a decade; to have only one would be a good start, because of course we want less legislation. However, at least the Bill points us in the right direction, and now we have to travel in that direction far more quickly and effectively than we have done in past years.

Julie Morgan: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr. Walker).
	I should like to start by paying tribute to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary. She and I came to this House together in 1997. I am proud that a Member of that intake became the first female Home Secretary; and she has always been such a dignified, courteous and concerned Home Secretary.
	I want to talk specifically about how the Bill affects children and families. I warmly welcome clause 57, which my right hon. Friend mentioned in her introductory speech. It is a very important clause that places a duty on the Secretary of State to ensure that certain specified functions in matters of immigration, asylum and nationality are carried out
	having regard to the need to safeguard and promote the welfare of children who are in the United Kingdom.
	That is similar to the duty in section 11 of the Children Act 2004. It is a big step forward, and I really welcome it.
	I also welcome the measures in the Bill to tackle child trafficking more effectively. In November 2008, the Government withdrew the reservation about children in the immigration and asylum system that they had made when they ratified the UN convention on the rights of the child. In addition, in January this year the Minister for Borders and Immigration launched the code of practice on keeping children safe from harm in the migration system. The Children's Commissioner for England, Sir Al Aynsley-Green, has also championed the cause of children in the immigration system and has recently produced a report about it.
	Progress has been made on this important issue, and the clause is important, but we need to see its effects on the ground. My belief is that children in the immigration and asylum system should be treated in the same way that we would expect our own children to be treated. The way they have been treated has been a long-standing problem, but I hope that it is now on the way to resolution. There are still concerns, including about the fact that children are being put in detention centres at all. Other matters have been raised, such as access to benefits, the ability to live above the poverty line and the problems of destitute families and individuals not being addressed in the Bill. The welfare clause is needed, because there has been great concern about how children have been treated in the asylum and immigration system.
	I am particularly concerned about the practice of picking up families with children in dawn raids, about which there has already been some discussion today. That has happened to very young children on several occasions in Cardiff, when people have come to their homes early in the morning. I recently heard of the experience of a six-year-old child and his mother who were woken up at half-past 4 in the morning, with seven or eight officers present to escort them to Yarl's Wood. That caused huge upset to the mother, the child, their neighbours and the child's school friends. I do not find it acceptable that that is how we are treating our children in this country today. I am sure that Ministers must agree with that, and I am pleased that this welfare clause is in the Bill. I hope that it will make a real difference.
	In the short time for which that family have been in Wales, they have found a place in the community. The removal of a family in such a way affects the whole community. Since that incident, the child's close friends have asked their mothers whether they will be taken away next. When the child is late coming to school, they have said, Oh, he's gone again. He's been taken away again. It has shattered the confidence not only of the child involved but of the other children who are at school with him and those in the same street. We have a duty to make our children feel that they will be brought up in the safest, most caring way possible. That means all children, including those in the asylum and immigration system. The new welfare duty in the Bill must tackle that issue.

Neil Gerrard: I am listening to what my hon. Friend is saying and I agree with all of it. Is she clear about whether the duty in the Bill, which will apply to UKBA staff, will also apply to the staff of any contractors that are performing services for the agency? I am sure that she knows that private contractors now get involved in important parts of the immigration system, including removals.

Julie Morgan: I thank my hon. Friend. That is certainly an important point, and I hope that the Minister will clarify it in his response.
	All children have a right to be treated equally, whoever they are. Children are children, and the children of asylum seekers and failed asylum seekers should be treated in the same way that we expect our own children to be treated. As things stand, I believe that they have been treated less favourably. I find it upsetting to think of children being snatched from their beds in dawn raids. I know of instances in which the mother was not allowed to explain to the child exactly what was happening.
	The Children's Commissioner for England raised that issue recently in his 11 Million Children briefing. He particularly drew attention to the loss of personal possessions, which is an important point. Someone who comes to this country as an asylum seeker, seeking refuge, may have brought very few things. When they are taken away early in the morning, there is sometimes not time for them to get those things. He told tales of children losing their treasured teddy bears. I find it very concerning that that has happened. I hope that the Minister can say that all those issues in relation to clause 57 will be addressed. I know that the code of practice has been in place, so I wonder why such things can still happen.
	In Wales, the Welsh Refugee Council is the lead voluntary sector agency working with refugees and asylum seekers, in partnership with the Children in Wales group, which I chair here in Westminster. In their briefing to me on the Bill, both organisations raised concerns, including about children being held in detention centres at all. In their briefing, they quoted Marcia, the mother of Michael, aged nine, as saying:
	After the detention Michael was in a bad way. The bedwetting was a problem again and he had nightmares. He wouldn't go upstairs without me...Michael was afraid of the police coming.
	They expressed concerns about dawn raids, long journeys, children and parents sometimes being split up and children seeing their parents at their most distraught and suffering post-traumatic stress. There are therefore questions about how the code of conduct is working, and it is essential that the welfare clause does its bit.
	We must consider the issue of children being in detention at all, which I do not believe should happen. As Anne Owers said in May 2008, which is not that long ago:
	An immigration removal centre can never be a suitable place for a child and we were dismayed to find children being detained and some children spending large amounts of time incarcerated. We were concerned about ineffective and unaccountable months of detention in this extremely important area.
	In the debate in the other place, it was mentioned that there are no reliable statistics about children being held in detention centres, and it was agreed that the Government would address that issue.
	There are some concerns about the new welfare duty. An Opposition Member said that it was important that it should apply to UKBA staff who are placed abroad at entry clearance points and during escorted removals from the UK. The concern is that the inclusion of the words in the UK could leave some of the most vulnerable children who come into contact with such staff unprotected while they are outside the UK. That was debated in the other place, and I hope that it will be given more consideration here. I understand that Lord West said that it would be a matter of policy, not duty.
	We need better statistics so that we know how many children and families are going into detention, and we should make a great effort to find effective alternatives, as we discussed earlier in the debate. There are other matters that I feel concerned about, most of which have had a good airing today, such as the destitution of many failed asylum seekers and the fact that many people cannot go back to their countries of origin because of long-standing conflicts in places such as Sudan, Somalia and Eritrea. I pay tribute to the campaign Still Human Still Here, many of whose events I have attended in Cardiff. Many of the failed asylum seekers I have met there have an enormous amount to contribute to this country, and I have been distressed by what they have had to do to get a livelihood. There are women who become prostitutes to get money so that they can manage.
	There are good things in the Bill, and I know that my hon. Friend the Minister for Borders and Immigration, who is going to respond, is a fair Minister. I have found him very helpful when I have taken individual cases to him. However, we have to make a decisive change to how children and families are treated in the system.

Alistair Burt: First, I apologise to the Home Secretary and to my hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) for not being present for the initial speeches. It is not like me to be absent, but I have been dealing with a matter that is pertinent to the debate during the afternoon, as the Minister for Borders and Immigration will appreciate. There is a letter waiting for him when he returns to his office. However, I apologise for speaking so late.
	It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Cardiff, North (Julie Morgan) because we find ourselves speaking about the same topic. The House may recall that the Yarl's Wood detention centre is in my constituency, and I have raised several issues about it over the years. I have had run-ins with the UK Border Agency, and I may well do so again in my remarks this evening. In my view, Yarl's Wood has worked well on behalf of detainees and it makes considerable efforts to ensure that children's time in detention is handled as well and as effectively as possible. The conditions in which the children are kept are good, as are the educational facilitiesit is just sad that they are there. I share the hon. Lady's viewI wish that they were not. It is a difficult issue, as Conservative and Labour Front Benchers well know, but I do not believe that children should be detained. Perhaps the circumstances that I shall describe will emphasise that.
	On Saturday, I went to see a family at Yarl's Wood. The family is Sudanesea mother with three girls, aged 14, 10 and three. They have been in this country for a couple of yearscoincidentally, they lived in Cardiff, though not in the hon. Lady's constituency. The father disappeared in Darfur and the family applied for asylum, but the application was turned down. A couple of months ago, the family were taken to Yarl's Wood. The three girls face the inevitable prospect of female genital mutilation when they returnthe 14-year-old faces it almost immediately on her return. It is impossible to describe to the House the horror and apprehension that the family feel about their imminent return and the desperate situation of the 14-year-old girl. They are in deep despair.
	I went to see the family because of the circumstances of their attempted removal last week, about which I have already written to the Minister. A further letter has gone to him today. I agree with the hon. LadyI have always found the Minister, who is a long-standing friend, capable and humane. I hope that he will agree to my request to see him before removal directions are carried out.
	I visited the family on Saturday with a member of Yarl's Wood Befrienders, to whom I pay tribute. The Befrienders are a group of ordinary men and women who, sometimes out of Christian conviction, sometimes out of sheer humanitarian concern, go and see the people who are detained in Yarl's Wood, not because they are taking part in their casesthat is left to lawyers, refugee groups, asylum groups and othersbut because they want those detained, who are currently almost exclusively women and children, to have someone to talk to, who might care for them and understand what they are going through. We know that all sorts of cases end up in a detention centrein some, it is appropriate that the people are returned. There will be cases of justice and injustice, but all who are there need a human touch at times, and the Befrienders do a wonderful job. On Saturday, I went with Heather to see the family whose case I am describing about their attempted removal.
	I was contacted suddenly before their anticipated removal, and I asked whether the Minister would be good enough in the circumstances, bearing in mind the likely consequences of their return for the girls, to put the removal directions on hold and allow the family more time to see a new solicitor and present another case. On the afternoon in question, the family were taken from Yarl's Wood. They were in a van on their way to the airport when news came through from the Minister's office that he had been kind enough to grant a stay of removal directions. The information was immediately transmitted to the mother, who still had her mobile phone, and she told the escort service that the removal directions had been cancelled. Understandably, the escorts needed to confirm that and they did so shortly after they arrived at the airport.
	However, instead of being immediately taken back to Yarl's Wood, the family was taken to another part of the airport, away from the main concourse, and then on to the tarmac. Their bags were loaded into the plane and it was made clear that the family would be put on the plane. The family members were separated from each other so that the children could be loaded on to the plane first. The mother became extremely distressed and was restrained in the elastic cuffs that are used. I am pleased to say that the children were not so restrained. The mother resisted, not unnaturally, and there was further to-ing and fro-ing. She was placed in the aircraft, where she continued to resist, and then the escort said that further confirmation had been received that the removal directions had been cancelled. That followed a further intervention on my part to the Minister's office, asking what on earth was going on when removal directions had been cancelled but, contrary to the Minister's express wishes, were being carried out.
	The family was taken off the plane, put back in the van and returned to Yarl's Wood, where they were placed in a separate area to help them recover. I appreciate why Serco at Yarl's Wood did thatI am sure that it was right and proper. The next morning, before they were to return to the unit, they were served with a further notice of immediate removal, which was in breach of the 72-hour rule. They should not have been served with such directions until 72 hours had passed after the previous attempt to remove them. Again, I made a further intervention and again, the Minister's office understood that a mistake had been made and the order was countermanded. The family was then let be, and I went to see them a couple of days later.
	I wrote to the Minister, saying that I would be grateful if he held an inquiry into the circumstances and ascertained why instructions had been countermanded and why the family had been put through the extraordinary distress and agony, which I cannot adequately convey to the House, of being told that their removal had been cancelled and then put on a plane, having the directions rescinded again, returning to Yarl's Wood and receiving a further removal direction. The hon. Lady spoke about clause 57, which deals with the welfare of children, and I am wondering where current provision for welfare is in such circumstances. I have asked the Minister whether he will be good enough to inquire into the circumstances.
	I learned this afternoon that removal directions have been set again for the family for Friday. As far as I know, no inquiry has taken place into what happened the other week. No time has been given for the new solicitors to make proper representations about what is likely to happen to the girls when they return to the Sudan. I am deeply upset that a further intervention by me is required to ask the Minister to give proper time for an inquiry into what happened and the reasons for it.
	I also ask the Minister to consider the case because I think that the family should be out of there. I do not mean that the case should be closed, but I do not believe that the family should be in Yarl's Wood. Families are detained at Yarl's Wood because the UK Border Agency has reason to believe that they might abscond. I am still puzzled about why families with children, especially young children, who need to be registered for health and education reasons, are perceived as likely to abscond. We all understand that that might apply to single people or even couples, but I have always been puzzled about why it would apply to children. The reason given is that families have refused directions previously and that makes them likely to abscond. I do not think that it does. I believe that it makes them likely to refuse directions in future, but not to abscond from their homes.
	The family should go back to Cardiff. The 14-year-old was unable to take a public examination when she was due to take it. As the hon. Lady knows, that is often a consequence of the UK Border Agency's intervention and of taking children at the wrong time, such as sensitive times for their education. The young lady was allowed to take her exam in the confines of Yarl's Wood.
	That is only one family's story. I do not pretend for a second to have the answers. I understand why some children are sometimes detained and why it is not possible for the Minister to say that we should never do so. I also understand the restriction on my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green), but I am concerned.
	I have been talking about just one family's story. I do not know whether we can have a policy in this country for no child ever to be returned to a place where she would face female genital mutilation, but I wish that we did. I do not see how we can make that work for everybody, but I am sure that the House can understand that anyone who had met a family in such circumstances, worked with them and seen their children would want to find some way of ensuring that what they feared did not happen. The situation is like the story of the woman on the beach who sees all the starfish lying on the shore. She walks down, picks one up and tosses it into the waves, but there are hundreds more on the shore, so her friend says to her, What on earth are you doing? Look at all the starfish. You can't deal with them all, and she says, No, I can't deal with them all. But I can deal with this oneI can toss this one back.
	Sometimes that is all that we can do. We can see only the odd case that comes to our notice and try to do our best. When the Minister gets back to his office, will he kindly look at the letter that I have written, lift the removal directions for this week, give the case an opportunity to be looked at afresh and see whether there is not a better answer? In the meantime, while the case is being consideredit may take some timecould the family return to Cardiff, where they ought to be?

Alison Seabeck: I apologise to hon. Members for coming late to this debate. I have been in the Committee considering the Finance Bill all afternoon.
	I want quickly to raise a straightforward point about a constituent of mine, William Watrin-Cattrall. He was born to a British father and a Dutch-Indonesian mother who were not married. As a result, young William, who has been pressing for some years to be a British citizen, is not allowed to be one. I ask the Minister please to revisit the amendment tabled in another place by Baroness Falkner that would allow those born to British fathers, but whose mothers are not British citizens and are not married to their fathers, to register as British citizens if their rights to do so derive from paternity.
	The Secretary of State currently has some discretion in respect of those who fall foul of the legislation. The law changed in July 2006, but I am not clear in how many cases citizenship has been granted. I would welcome any figures from the Minister on just how many people have been given citizenship. However, I hope that the Government are willing to revisit the issue in the course of the Bill's passage through this House, as his colleague in the other place has suggested. My simple plea is therefore this: will the Minister please look at the issue for my constituent William Watrin-Cattrall?

Damian Green: This has been a fascinating debate and, particularly given the revelations of my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), a moving and in some ways horrifying one. That causes some difficulties, in that I can either respond to the debate or address the Bill, which is what this debate is supposed to be about, because, to be honest, the two bear a slightly tangential relationship with each other.  [ Interruption. ] As urged by the Minister from a sedentary position, I shall concentrate largely on the Bill, as that is what we are meant to be debating.
	Let me first take this opportunity to say that I hope that the Home Secretary finds life more peaceful and less turbulent out of the front line. Let me also assure her, in her absence, that I for one will be reading at least one part of her memoirs with particular interest.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr. Walker) made a thoughtful contribution and was right about the necessity to debate immigration with the right tone. At times in this House and outside, that has not happened. It is incumbent on us all to give a lead in that respect.
	The Bill illustrates that we have a Government who, after 12 years of strugglingand largely failingin immigration policy, are now just punch drunk when trying to deal with it. The House sees a new immigration Bill every year, but far too many of them, including this one, ignore the real issues and instead add to the confusion of those caught up in our immigration system.
	This was originally meant to be the year when we had the great reforming immigration Bill, replacing all legislation going back to the 1970s and simplifying it. Then Ministers published a draft Bill, with 13 parts and 214 clauses, which they said was part of the biggest shake-up of the immigration system for a decade. By the time we saw the Bill before us today, it had shrunk alarmingly, to four parts and 55 clauses. Being realistic, I should welcome that. Too much of the Government's legislation is usually damaging, so the less of it and the smaller their Bills are, the better. Despite that shrinkage, however, the Government have nevertheless still managed to include a fair amount of bad ideas in the Bill, which is why we welcome the improvements that were made to it in the other place.
	However, if I understood the relevant parts of the Home Secretary's speech correctly, it is particularly regrettable that it is still the Government's intention to remove many of the improvements that were made in the other place. Presumably that is what we will spend some of our time in Committee debating. If so, I should tell the Minister now that we will oppose him in those endeavours. I hope that other parties will do the same, because in many cases where the Government suffered defeat on the Bill in another place, it was because of cross-party efforts. I hope that we will continue that in this House.
	We have before us a rag-bag Bill that lacks any internal coherence, although some of it is useful. We have heard contributions from the hon. Member for Cardiff, North (Julie Morgan) and my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire about clause 57 and the improvements in the treatment of children. We welcome that and, more importantly, we hope that it will lead to a genuine change in how children are treated in the immigration system. Some of the Bill is therefore useful, but some of it is irrelevant and other parts are actively damaging.
	Let me go through the various parts of the Bill. Part 1 deals with functions at the border. The Government are clearly trying to reduce duplication of functions. We think that that is a useful step, but we think even more strongly that the Bill is a missed opportunity. The Government's failure to tackle Britain's porous borders has resulted in a disastrous rise in organised immigration crime. We cannot tackle crime in the UK effectively without addressing the problem of our porous borders. We believe that our borders can be better policed, preventing significant illegal immigration, as well as cracking down on the trafficking of people, weapons and drugs. That is why, as my hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary explained, an incoming Conservative Government would make the setting up of a national border police force one of our top priorities. The Bill could, if the Government were to co-operate, allow us to make a start on that.
	Experience has surely taught us in all parts of the House that the specialisation of police services is effective in fighting new types of crime. That is why we set up a committee under Lord Stevens, a former Metropolitan Police Commissioner, who conducted a review of our border security arrangements and concluded that only a unified border force could protect our borders effectively. We intend to replace the current system, which lacks a fully comprehensive and joined-up strategy as well as adequate direction. The officers of the border force should have all the necessary powers and training to arrest, detain and prosecute offenders, as well as the ability to develop specialist skills in fighting people trafficking, illegal immigration and drug smuggling. Although part 1 has some useful features, it is a huge missed opportunity.
	Part 2 concerns citizenship and naturalisation. I originally thought that the problem with this part of the Bill was that it was slightly irrelevant to the real and very complex issues affecting community cohesion and national identity. I freely agree that those issues are crucial, difficult and hugely complex. My original worry about the Bill was that it sent out a clear message that even if someone is here, working hard and contributing to society, the Government want to make it more difficult for them to stay here and become British. That seems to be the message behind the Bill, and I am genuinely not sure that it is one that the Minister really wants to send out. It might suit some short-term, dog-whistle politics, but it is certainly not the most thoughtful long-term strategy.
	The problem is that the Home Secretary complicated matters even more in her speech this afternoon, which I found completely extraordinary [ Interruption. ] If the Whip would like to contribute to the debate, he is more than welcome to do so [ Interruption. ] Okay. Well, if he is telling the Minister what to say, I feel for the Minister.
	Let me return to what the Home Secretary said earlier, because it was extraordinary in two ways. First, she said that she was proposing a new points-based system for citizenship, along with the points-based system for general immigration that the Government have introduced. It seems extraordinaryespecially at a time when this place finds itself in more ill repute than it has done for a long timewhen we are discussing a Bill that partly deals with citizenship, that the Minister responsible for the Bill should announce that a whole new citizenship policy is coming down the line and that she is proposing to introduce it for consultation within the next eight weeks. There is not a word about this new policy in the Bill that the House of Commons is discussing today and that the House of Lords has already spent weeks discussing. What kind of way to treat Parliament is that? The Home Office is quietly working away at a whole new policy relating specifically to a policy area in the Bill, yet it has not thought to share it with any of the parliamentarians who are debating the Bill. I think that Ministers should consider their behaviour very seriously.
	Even more extraordinary was the fact that, at one stage in what was notlet me be charitablethe most coherent explanation of a policy that I have ever heard, the Home Secretary said that she would cap the number of people granted citizenship each year. So she is proposing to introduce not only a new set of hurdles in the form of a new points-based system, but, on top of that, a cap. Like everyone else, I appreciate the irony that that sounds very similar to our proposals on general immigration, which she has always criticised and dismissed. She now appears to have adopted them wholesale in relation to citizenship.
	It seems very peculiar that a proposal as radical as this could be introduced in the middle of our deliberations on the Bill. It is not even as though we were promised the Bill in the next Session of Parliament. We have been promised another immigration Bill in the next Session, but it is supposed to be for simplification purposes. A radical change to the citizenship arrangements in this country is being introduced between two immigration Bills that the House is supposed to be debating, which is the most extraordinary way to proceed.
	But let us discuss the Bill before us. Two areas give rise to particular concern. One, which has been mentioned by Members on both sides of the House, is the offer of a quicker route to citizenship if voluntary activity is undertaken. That comes very close to compulsory volunteering, which is perhaps the ultimate absurdity. I share the fears of the Home Affairs Committee, which has produced a thoughtful report on the Bill:
	There is a danger that the activity condition, if implemented without proper consideration, could cause a glut of poorly regulated 'volunteers'. This could place undue and unwanted pressure on the voluntary sector.
	That is a genuine fear, and I hope that Ministers will listen to it. I hope that they will also listen to Volunteering England, which has asked a number of questions, the most pertinent of which is:
	How will the Minister encourage organisations that feel that they do not have capacity to take more volunteers to open up new opportunities and spend time on the verification arrangements for the active citizenship scheme?
	We are in the throes of setting up yet more unnecessary new bureaucracy that will make life difficult, particularly for the small organisations in the volunteering field that often do very good and important work.
	The other unsatisfactory aspect of this part of the Billit has been much improved by their lordshipswas the retrospective section relating to highly skilled migrants who are already here. That group has already won significant victories in the courts against the Government, and it would be sensible for Ministers to stop fighting a battle that they keep losing. In the Lords, my noble Friend Baroness Hanham succeeded in introducing an amendment, which now stands as clause 39. It ensures that people in the closing stages of their limited leave to remain do not get caught up by the new arrangements. That is only fair. Indeed, on 6 April, Mrs. Justice Cox found that there was
	a substantive legitimate expectation that the terms on which you joined the Highly Skilled Migrants programme would be the terms on which you qualified for settlement.
	That is as clear-cut as it is possible to be, and I hope that the Government will now stop flogging this very dead horse.
	It is also worth considering the Government's desire to abolish the common travel area between the UK and the Republic of Ireland, as well as the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. The hon. Member for Belfast, South (Dr. McDonnell) is rightly concerned about that. The Government claim not to be doing this, but their assertion simply does not stand up to examination. There will be immigration controls on air and sea journeys where none exists at present. There will no longer be a common travel area.
	Will the Minister tell us what effect these new controls will have on staffing arrangements at the UKBA? New border controls will mean either a significant shift of resources from existing posts or the need for many more immigration officers. Which of these is going to happen? To make matters worse, the measures will not lead to an increase in security for the UK. There are, rightly, no proposals to change the arrangements along the land border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, so the effect will be to inconvenience travellers for no discernible purpose whatever. If Ministers argue that citizens in England, Scotland and Wales will be better protected by these measures, why are they discriminating against British citizens who live in Northern Ireland? The current arrangements work well and do not require changing. The removal of the Government's proposed change received widespread cross-party support in the Lords, and I urge Ministers not to seek to change the provision back.
	We will also be interested to hear Ministers' arguments about the change to the court arrangements proposed and rejected by their lordships. I think that we all want to achieve a system of immigration and asylum justice that is considerably faster than the current system, but that does not achieve speed purely at the expense of those who may have a legitimate claim to appeal. It was obvious that Ministers in the Lords could not convince their House of the merits of the Government's proposals, and I shall be interested to hear the Minister argue the case in this House.
	We shall obviously be raising a range of other issues in Committee. From whatever angle we look at this Billthe eighth immigration Bill produced by the Government in their period of officeit fails to deal with the central problems produced by the long-term failure of immigration policy. It fiddles around the edges of a number of big issues, but it does not make our borders more secure or provide clear incentives for those in this country to integrate fully and properly, and it is not fair to many of those who have come here to work and to contribute to our economy.
	There is a need for big changes in our immigration system. We need changes to the points-based system to allow us to place a limit on the number of work permits issued, to bring about a properly integrated border police force and to strengthen the need to speak English for those intending to settle in this country, particularly through marriage.
	The Bill fails to address these important central issues. It will go the way of many of its predecessorsover-hyped on its introduction, then barely leaving a trace on the real world. We need properly radical immigration legislation, but to get that, we need a new Government. With every day that passes, it becomes increasingly clear just how much we need a new Government.

Phil Woolas: I thank hon. Members across the House for their contributions to the debate, which have revealed a great deal of experience. I should like to address my remarks first to my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Alison Seabeck) and the hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), who have raised serious points. Of course I agree to undertake to look into them, and to meet the hon. Gentleman. I believe that a letter on that matter may have crossed, as well.
	In all cases, the policy that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has instructed me to adopt, which I am more than happy to do, is to place great weight on the representations of Members of Parliament because the MP is the person to whom someone seeking redress should go. That is why we take those representations very seriously, and I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Dewsbury (Mr. Malik) backs me up on that point. That is also why in all these instances we advise people that if they have a problem, they should to go to their MP. The Immigration Act 1971 gives the Secretary of State powers that are mainly delegated to me, and I take that responsibility extremely seriously. I am grateful to the hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire for his kind comments and I undertake to look further into the issue he raised.
	A number of specific comments have been made and I shall try to answer them in the short time I have available [Interruption. ] and I also want to deal with the bigger picture. Yes, I can assure the hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green) and the House that I do not intend to speak until 10 o'clock. If I did, I suspect it would be last time I would ever speak from this Dispatch Boxand some might well think that that would be a good thing, anyway.  [Interruption. ] Pause for objections, please,  Hansard.
	This is a small Bill, and I believe that it has been unfairly criticised for not doing the whole job when it is, in fact, part of the jigsaw puzzle of the changes to the immigration system that we are introducing. It does essentially two things, both of which I believe have secured a consensus in this House and in the other place.
	First, the Bill brings together the necessary statutory changes to ensure that the UK Border Agency is put on a proper legal footingthat involves the merger of its customs functions with its immigration functions from the previous Border and Immigration Agency and Customs and Excise, or the relevant parts of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs. The creation of that single force meets the exact requirement that the House wants the Government to meet. As my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary mentioned in her opening remarks, when she first assumed that office, she intended not just to get rid of duplication, but to provide a more focused border security force.
	In itself, of course, the border security force is only part of the chain. The 42 police forces or 43 if we include the transport policeare now backed up by the Serious Organised Crime Agency, which operates overseas in co-operation with our border posts, providing the joined-up police powers that Lord Stevens looked at in his report. The incorporation of the police force into the new UK Border Agency has taken place without diminishing the role of the other security organisations, which was the fear I had about it. I believe that the partnership is very important.

Keith Vaz: rose

Phil Woolas: I give way to the Chairman of the Select Committee on Home Affairs.

Keith Vaz: I am grateful. We must not forget the importance of Europol, which, under its new dynamic British director, is fully supported by the Home Secretary. The director is, as I say, British and Europol works with other police forces throughout the EU in order to combat illegal immigration.

Phil Woolas: As ever, the expertise of the Select Committee Chairman helps me out. He makes a valid point, and I would add to it Frontex, the European frontier force. Frankly, this country could not protect itself against some of the criminal gangs coming from northern Africa and elsewhere without such co-operation. That raises an interesting point that I would like to put to the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne) and ask him to think about deeply as I know that he can. We depend on co-operation with other countriesprimarily in Europe, but also elsewhere. In order to get that co-operation, we must share policies and information. One cannot take an exclusively nationalistic view; we cannot expect to collect data on people travelling to our country unless we are prepared to share data with other countries. That is a matter of common sense in practical policy information.
	The first part of the Bill thus achieves what I have set out and the second part looks at the idea of earned citizenship. Again, I believe that some of the criticism of that idea has been unfair.
	At the moment, this country provides for citizenship through naturalisation, for temporary leave to remain and in the middle we have the concept of indefinite leave to remain. Many of the people in my constituency and in others who have indefinite leave to remain are neither citizens nor temporary migrants; they are in what one might describe as no man's land. What we have done in this country has, in my view, failed to provide the routes for integration required to give expression to the aspiration of migrants to integrate into our communities and to get on with their lives. The big mistake in our debate is the false assumption that the migrant does not wish to move to integrate and to aspire. That is precisely why the idea of earned citizenship is not punitive, but a platform to help meet those aspirations.

Neil Gerrard: Will the Minister acknowledge that some people are perfectly happy to remain with the status of indefinite leave to remain? They want to live here, but they do not necessarily wish to become citizens. Some countries allow dual nationality and others do not, so some people who might face having to give up their original nationality in order to become British citizens might actually prefer to remain with the status of indefinite leave.

Phil Woolas: Of course I understand that point, but a person on ILR does not get dual citizenship and cannot get a visa on a British passport because they are not British citizens.  [Interruption. ] The hon. Member for Ashford looks confused; he has obviously never had an advice surgery with anybody with ILR status. In commenting on excellent and well-informed contributions, I have reassured the House that these proposals do not in any way retrospectively affect those with ILR. The hon. Member for Ashford fairly raised a point relating to the highly skilled migrants scheme; I concede that point, the court has ruled, and we will of course obey.

Damian Green: I am very glad to hear that last point and I look forward to the Home Secretaryor her successorfollowing the same route in respect of the ruling about DNA. Let me explain the apparent confusion. About 40 per cent. of people with ILR never apply for citizenship, so we are not talking about just a few people around the edges of the system, but about very significant numbers. The Minister appears to be advancing a new doctrine that those people are in some way a failure of the system and that he wants everyone on ILR to move towards citizenship. If I am looking confused, it is because I cannot really believe that he is saying that.

Phil Woolas: If the hon. Gentleman thinks that I am not familiar with those with indefinite leave to remain, I invite him to come to Oldham this weekend. Of course it is the case that many people on ILR have chosen not to go for citizenship, but I ask the Houseand the Committee if the House gives leave for the Bill to move onto consider the reasons for that. The main point is that the proposals for earned citizenship should not be seen as punitive on the prospective citizen, but as a route to help those people to integrate into our society. That is why it is possible to provide the reassurance that the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr. Walker)I agree with his analysisquite rightly asked for. This means reassuring our indigenous population that that immigrant positively wants to be a member of our community so that we can have better cohesion and better relations in all our communities.
	Let me deal with some specifics. The two parts of the Bill I have covered so far are quite simple. As the hon. Member for Ashford fairly said, it is a short Bill, so it does not provide the complete picture. It is not a simplification Bill. We have made announcements on that. It is rather unfair to say that we have put further efforts to one side; we have announced that we will move forward. I am grateful to the Select Committee for the scrutiny it has carried out so far. As the House knows, we intend to come back with further proposals.

Keith Vaz: I wonder whether my hon. Friend remembers my speech. In fact, I lamented the fact that we did not have the detail from the Minister, which was why we could not scrutinise the Bill. We hope that he will be able to allow that scrutiny in Committee, butI am following his arguments very carefullywill he now address the point that was made about the backlog at the Border and Immigration Agency? Every Member present is concerned about the fact that another Bill is being passed and we are still receiving the letters from Lin Homer telling us that we must wait for two years to get a result.

Phil Woolas: The Chairman of the Select Committee never misses an opportunity to raise this issue. Let me point out that we use the words up to two years, which is not the same as two years. Let me also point out that the figures that we have given, and continue to give, to his Committee show that we are managing the legacy, that it is being reduced, and that we are dealing with decisions more quickly. Moreover, following his Committee's representations, we have made policy changes to respond to the needs of Members of Parliament across the House, and the pilot that was conducted on an all-party basis has been implemented. So he is making progress, but he is asking a bit too much. In fact, he is asking two questions.
	Let me now deal with the issue of compulsory volunteering. We reject the accusation that the volunteering is compulsory. What we are trying to dowith, I hope, the support across the House that we have received so faris provide a route enabling people to show their commitment to citizenship by engaging in certain voluntary activities. The discussion of what those activities will be is for the Committee; we have made our own views known.
	Let me make clear that we do not propose the abolition of the common travel area, which was mentioned by a number of Members including the hon. Member for Belfast, South (Dr. McDonnell). Along with the Government of Ireland, we are considering how we can improve the situation. According to our assessment, an increased security risk is posed by third-country nationals using the route. My hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Mn (Albert Owen) expressed anxiety about the potential impact on the ferries at Holyhead, and of course we must act in a way that is sensitive to that. However, I think that when we discuss the detail, the House will benefit from reassurances similar to those provided by my noble Friend Lord West of Spithead in his winding-up speech in the other place.
	Let me deal with the point made by the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart). An interesting dialogue is taking place with the devolved Administrations on how we can fine-tune migration policy. As I think is recognised by the Scottish Government and others, the quintessential point is that if an immigrant may come to a certain part of the United Kingdom, we must have policies that encourage him or her to stay there, but there is a danger that if the pull of south-east England, north-west England or wherever were great, a Scottish route might be used to usurp it. We must have a grown-up dialogue with our Scottish colleagues about how to deal with that. I believe that the Migration Advisory Committee has made progress.
	The policy instrument that is beneficial to the hon. Gentleman's argument is the separation of temporary migration for economic purposes from permanent settlement. I think that if someone comes to the country to work in, say, a skills-shortage area for a definite period, it will be possible to have our cake and eat it. However, we should bear in mind the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) and others about that separation of temporary migration from permanent settlement.
	Some Members referred to the detention of children. The hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire cited a specific case, but also made a general point. My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, North (Julie Morgan) has raised the issue with me and with others, and has spoken about it in the House on many occasions. Government policy is, of course, that alternatives to detention to children are preferable, and a number of pilots have been conducted. I respect the point that was made by the hon. Member for Ashford, wearing his constituency hat. I was interested by what he said, and will bear it in mind. Dungavel in Scotland is one example of the possible alternatives.
	The independent tribunals and courts, not Ministers, make decisions on eligibility and grants. It is the independent system that makes the decisions. I can reassure the House that I personally review each and every case of a child in detention. Each case comes up through the system and on to my desk, and I take that responsibility very seriously. However, the parent also has a responsibility to ensure that the child is not being used in the system. As was made clear by the example given by the hon. Member for Ashford, the perception is often as bad as the reality, and is sometimes worse. However, we cannot set policy precedent on the basis of an individual case. The Bill proposes to give us an even greater duty for the care of children than we already have. I think the House has welcomed that, and I am grateful for its support. I hope that the Committee will give more thought to the matter.
	The hon. Member for Belfast, South mentioned the police and ombudsman powers. We will, of course, consider his points and respond to them in Committee.
	I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard) has followed the debate very closely, and that he has concerns about the citizenship proposals. I want to try to convince him, and others who share his view, that the idea of earned citizenship isas I have already saidbeneficial not just to the immigrant but to the wider community. I also think it obvious that making change may have unintended consequences. My hon. Friend has alerted the House to some of them, and the hon. Member for Eastleigh alerted us to potential unintended consequences in the area of volunteering. The House must consider that, but I urge it not to reject proposals for change that will improve the overall position because of concerns about unintended consequences, real though they may be. I believe that, between us, we can solve those problems.
	The hon. Member for Eastleigh made a genuinely powerful case for the benefit of migrancy to this country. He gave us figures based on experience, and pointed out that this is a country of transition for many hundreds of millions of people. Last year, 285 million came in and out of it. Our border controls, only part of which are dealt with in the Bill through UK Border Agency powers, are backed up by the new regimes on fingerprinting visasthe biometric identity which is proven to be workingelectronic borders and the reintroduction of border controls. I agree with the hon. Gentleman's criticism of the past abolition of those controls.
	The ability to analyse visa overstayers is critical. Without that and without the enforcement powers that the Bill partly gives us, the visa regime is worthless. That is why it must be seen as part of a wider strategy which includes the points-based system and, crucially, the sponsorship role of universities, colleges, employers and, indeed, individuals. The criticisms of the bogus colleges are, I believe, addressed by the introduction of the new scheme, but we have not hidden from the failures of the past under this and earlier Governments.

Christopher Huhne: Will the Minister concede that while the e-Border scheme is crucial to ensuring that there are no visa overstayers, it is entirely unnecessary to proceed to collect all the other information about our citizens' travel plans as part of ensuring that our immigration control works? It simply is not.

Phil Woolas: I have already urged the hon. Gentleman to think this through. First, we cannot operate in isolation from other countries. We cannot say to the Americans, We want all your information, but we will not give you any of ours; it does not work like that. Secondly, if one is keeping a register of people entering and leaving the country, one has to count the British people who are leaving as well, in order to identify where there may be false or fraudulent use of documents, for example, or dual citizenship, or a plethora of other such eventualities. In addition, there are the benefits in terms of crime and security; that point has already been made. Already, 2,900 people have been arrested as a result of e-Borders, many of them for serious crimes including murder and rape, simply because we have that counting in and counting out system.

Chris Grayling: May I press the Minister on the point about other countries? First, any other country is free to decide what to door what not to doin terms of tracking people coming across its own borders. Secondly, and more importantly, is he actually suggesting that data about the movement of British citizens into and out of the United Kingdom will be shared with the Americans?

Phil Woolas: Through ignorance rather than deliberately I suspect, the hon. Gentleman is confusing the two issues of the passenger transport data and the e-Borders system. I invite himI make this invitation publicto come to the control centre at Heathrow and see for himself the benefits of that system. I am not a betting man, but my bet would be that when he has seen it [Interruption.] I bet I would win it. My bet is that when he has seen it, he will drop his opportunistic opposition to it, which is based on his wrong belief that this is somehow an infringement of people's civil liberties.
	The point about co-operation is extremely serious. We cannot say to the Americans and others that we will not give them our passenger data when we expect to know who is coming from their country to ours. That does not take into account the way the crime gangs work.

Christopher Huhne: rose

Phil Woolas: I shall give way again, but I have been urged to conclude by everybody in the House, so I shall then do so.

Christopher Huhne: I am grateful to the Minister for giving way again. Many Members will be reassured if we can have some more clarity on this issue, however. Under the e-Borders scheme, the Minister is proposing that the travel plans of ordinary British citizens going to and from this country will be stored on a database. Will that be made available to the Americans, or not?

Phil Woolas: Those data will not. They are already collatedthey have been for some time. If the hon. Gentleman reads the briefings that are available, he will come to understand the difference between the passenger data and the e-Borders system. I open the invitation to him to come and look at that.
	I believe I have answered every specific question, and also the general points.

Jeremy Corbyn: rose

Phil Woolas: If I have not answered my hon. Friend's point, I shall try to do so now.

Jeremy Corbyn: I thank the Minister for giving way. He will have heard my interventions on the issue of the Chagos islanders and the anomaly in the 2002 law, which is specific to a smallish number of people. The matter was discussed in the Lords. Is he prepared to accept an appropriate amendment in Committee to try to resolve this anomaly and give these people what Parliament wished them to have in the initial legislation?

Phil Woolas: At the moment, the policy of the Government is not to do so. I believe the Committee will wish to look at that issue, and, as my hon. Friend rightly says, there is also the debate from the other place, which I have studied.

Christopher Huhne: Will the Minister give way?

Phil Woolas: No; I said that I would not give way again. I believe I have answered all the questions that have been asked.
	I believe that this short Bill is a fair Bill. I also believe that there is consensus on it. The debates on it have raised some specific points that I hope we can iron out in Committee if the Bill is passed this evening, and I certainly intend to build on the consensus on it. In answer to the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), it is certainly the case that, based on the good work he has done in scrutinising and simplifying the Billwhich ran to, I think, 350 clauseswe will come back and provide the final piece of the jigsaw in terms of the border controls that this country wants. I commend the Bill to the House.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [ Lords] (Programme)

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83A(7) ) ,
	That the following provisions shall apply to the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [ Lords]:
	 Committal
	1. The Bill shall be committed to a Public Bill Committee.
	 Proceedings in Public Bill Committee
	2. Proceedings in the Public Bill Committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion on Thursday 18 June 2009.
	3. The Public Bill Committee shall have leave to sit twice on the first day on which it meets.
	 Consideration and Third Reading
	4. Proceedings on consideration shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour before the moment of interruption on the day on which those proceedings are commenced.
	5. Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption on that day.
	6. Standing Order No. 83B (Programming committees) shall not apply to proceedings on consideration and Third Reading.
	 Other proceedings
	7. Any other proceedings on the Bill (including any proceedings on consideration of any message from the Lords) may be programmed. (Mr. Ian Austin.)
	 Question agreed to.

Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [ Lords] (money)

Queen's Recommendation signified.
	 Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 52(1)(a)) ,
	That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [ Lords], it is expedient to authorise
	(1) the payment out of money provided by Parliament of
	(a) any expenditure incurred under or by virtue of the Act by the Secretary of State or a government department, and
	(b) any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable under or by virtue of any other Act out of money so provided, and
	(2) payments out of the Consolidated Fund to enable the Commissioners for Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, the Secretary of State or the Director of Border Revenue to make disbursements.  (Mr. Ian Austin.)
	 Question agreed to.

BORDERS, CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION BILL [ LORDS] (WAYS AND MEANS)

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 52(1)(a)) ,
	That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [ Lords], it is expedient to authorise
	(1) the charging of fees in connection with nationality applications, claims, services, processes, advice and information; and
	(2) the payment of sums into the Consolidated Fund.  (Mr. Ian Austin.)
	 Question agreed to.

FAMILY BENEFITS (ABSENT TEENAGE FATHERS)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn. (Mr. Ian Austin.)

Graham Allen: My constituency has the highest teenage pregnancy rates in western Europe, and we in Nottingham are doing things to address thatfor instance, by having created the teenage pregnancy taskforce, which I have the privilege of chairing.
	All too often, there is an unspoken assumption that girls alone should take responsibility for avoiding unwanted pregnancy and for caring for the baby if they fail. A recent Bristol university study shows that when both the parents of a new baby are under 17, only 2 per cent. of fathers are still involved with the baby nine months after the birth. Recent research by Dr. Peter Gates suggested that most teenage mothers in Nottingham were raising their child on their own, and that relationships between teenage parents were generally unstable. This is a tragedy.
	The evidence suggests that love, nurture and support from an involved young father in the brain-building early years of nought to five gives a baby much better life chances. Yet teenage fathers are themselves children. That is the central dilemma for social policy generally and the benefits system in particular. That dilemma is complicated by the dispersal of responsibilities and powers between Government Departments and agencies, especially the divide between the Department for Work and Pensions, dealing with benefits and enforcement, and the Department for Children, Schools and Families, dealing with wider policy. Perhaps even the Department for Culture, Media and Sport could think through how it could tackle the drip-feed of laddish TV and testosterone-filled films, and help promote a more respectful culture of manhood and fatherhood to give role models for young males in our society.
	We need to ensure that the complex system of policy, payments and penalties gives clear encouragement to teen fathers to do the best they can for their children, not only financially but emotionally. The new Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission has the opportunity to make this agenda its own. I have had the good fortune to speak to a number of its senior people, and it is clear that it does not want to be just an enforcement agency focusing on recalcitrant fathers. Those people want to go further; they see a policy role in trying to pre-empt the problems before they begin.
	Let me now take a look at the current benefits systemand compliment the Minister on the work she has done in this area during her spell at the DWP. Contrary to the stereotype, many young fathers want to be involved with their children, but some are held back by confusion or anxiety about the benefits system and its financial implications. Does the Minister think that it is true that teen parents can get more benefit separately than together, thus discouraging the creation and continuation of family units? I would like to know whether that popular perception is true. If it is not true, we need to get that message into the areas that I, like a number of colleagues in the Chamber tonight, represent.
	Many young fathers also complain that the benefits system is complicated and financially burdensome. The new Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission now encourages parents to agree child maintenance arrangements directly with each other. That sounds good for people of good educationit is a sensible way to proceed, and many middle class people would use it to make good arrangementsbut it is not necessarily that easy for poorer and less articulate parents, especially in areas where personal intimidation is often a way of resolving personal issues. I hope that the Minister will tell me, perhaps in writing, about the Government's plans to help that group of peoplethose on a lower socio-economic scaleto make the maintenance arrangements and to make them stick.
	We also need to find a place for young fathers who have no chance of making payments. Our system does not yet provide the social and emotional basis for such fathers to make informed decisions, nor does it give them a set of clear incentives to stay involved with their children, even when they desperately want to. This is not just about the crudities of the benefits system; it is about the subtleties of ensuring that the right perception and opportunity exist for young teenage fathers, who often want to make a go of a relationship and raise a child in the right way.
	The Government have made fantastic progress in recent times, and I am particularly delighted that they intend to allow, in the very near future, all young mothers to keep any financial maintenance from their child's father without losing any benefits. That is a long overdue, welcome and important step forward, on which I congratulate the Minister. It will deny absentee fathers the excuse, which many use, to refuse a contribution because, as they put it, The social will only take it away. Apart from relieving family poverty, the change will also provide an opportunity for fathers to make a real difference if they wish to. Will the Minister let us know, either now or in writing to me, what research is being done by the new CMEC on how best to encourage non-resident parents, who are overwhelmingly fathers, to pay maintenance in those new circumstances? The Government have created an opportunity, and I hope that it will be seized upon.
	We also need to keep the benefits system as simple as possible. Young low-income parents have to negotiate a labyrinth of websites and leaflets. Will the Minister examine the possibility of a pilot for a one-stop office for young fathers, which could offer advice and support, as well as a medium through which to make maintenance payments? We could try that in one or two areas. Very often the parents of young mothers and fathers encourage absenteeism by the father. The perception that it is always the girl in the relationship who is the wronged party may not always be true; it may well be that the teenage boy would like to play a more significant part but is driven away by the mother herself, or by relatives and the hostility that the young person encounters. By refusing access and by blatant hostility, threats and infighting, such people can deny young fathers the chance to win the trust and respect not only of the family but of the child itself.

David Drew: Does my hon. Friend accept that one of the downsides of the separation of the payment through the Child Support Agency from the legal process is that there is always frustration when someone is making a contribution, but that does not mean that they get any more rights of access to their children? It is unfair if somebody has made an attempt to pay to bring up their child, yet is just as likely not to see their child as someone who has flagrantly disregarded the need to make a contribution.

Graham Allen: I shall touch briefly on contact later, but my hon. Friend's remarks underline the need to bring the Ministry of Justice and other Departments to the party and ensure that we are not working in silos. All the parts have to work together, and as I know how difficult that can be at the local level, I can only imagine how difficult that might be in Whitehall, if the Minister were to set herself that task. There would be some tremendous dividends if we were to go along the lines that he suggests.
	I wish to finish my remarks about the one-stop shop by saying that that could be a way in which young fathers could develop the self-esteem to build relationships and to have a meaningful dialogue with their child's hostile grandparents.
	There is another wrinkle in the benefits system for many fathers. They claim that maintenance payments are too high, and that failure to keep up with them leads to the breakdown of relationships with their children. Obviously, that problem is more acute for young fathers with a very low earning capacity. Full-time work may not be an option, especially if they are still in education. Through peer mentoring by other, successful young fathers, and through having vocational training, young fathers could be prepared for the world of work and for their parental responsibilities in a much better way.
	The Care to Learn scheme, which pays up to 160 per child per week for teens' child care and travel, is welcome. That and similar programmes could also give young fathers on benefits the chance to learn a skill and the chance to move forward and get a steady income coming into their house. Let us suppose that by taking part in such programmes young fathers secured a weekly addition of 5 or 10 to the mother's benefit, without affecting her other entitlements. What a change that might be able to bring about: it would give young fathers not only skill and experience, but self-worth and the chance to demonstrate their sense of responsibility to their child.
	Alternatively, a community programme pilot could provide waged positions with training and support and an automatic contribution to the mother as a maintenance payment. I hope very much that the CMEC will be allowed to let its imagination run into policy areas and to provide some of these new ideas that will begin to unite some of the families that we are talking about, and that that will allow those young children to have a mother and father in the same household. What more does the Minister feel can be done to incentivise young fathers to combine education with part-time work and maintaining the fullest possible involvement with their children?
	My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) touched on the difficult and sensitive topic of maintenance and contact between parents and children. The former is administered by CMEC, the latter by the courts. In the light of his remarks, will the Minister consider working across departmental boundaries and tryagain, in a couple of areasto bring maintenance, contact and all other child-related issues together under the same roof, as happens in Australia's family centres? That might be one way of making progress in this country. Let us try it in a couple of areas that want to initiate it and see whether it works with organisations that are attempting to find some answers to these problems.
	I now wish to deal with the myths. I hope that the Minister will take on the rolehere is another burden for herof myth-buster general in this area. She knows very well that although we can change things centrally, word of mouth locally can take a long while to catch up, and myths still persist. For example, let us consider the prevalent myth that benefits and offers of housing give incentives for young women to become lone parents. A study by the Minister's Department this year concluded that there was no consistent evidence for that, but when I talk to single mums on the estates in my constituencyI am sure that other Members do the same in their constituenciesI find that the perception is very different. If we could have provision in supported housing with fewer limitations than at presentthere is no space for couples with childrenit would send a clear message to fathers in those areas with a concentration of teen pregnancies that they would be welcome. It could break down the matriarchal culture on some of our estates, where there is no adult male in the household, just grandmother, mother and young child. Housing is the responsibility of the Department for Communities and Local Government, which needs to be brought in on this matter because Whitehall needs to mesh on these issues.
	I have also suggested to the Minister the need for a simple myth-busting series of posters to be spread throughout our poorer communities to underline the recent positive changes in the benefit regime and to kill off some of the more pernicious myths that stop people making progress.
	Tackling teenage pregnancies and absentee fathers requires not only helping young parents to provide effective parenting, but also nurturing and supporting young people before pregnancy occurs, and encouraging them to make good life choices. Nottingham's early intervention package therefore begins with the babies who will be tomorrow's parents. We use the family-nurse partnership not only to give intensive help to new teen mothers through health visitors, but to instil the essential capabilities in infants that will enable them to become better parents later in life.
	Nottingham's Sure Start and children's centres then pick up the baton and they aim to make children strong and resilient, through activities that encourage them to make their own decisions. That prepares them for making the really tough decisions later onincluding those about sex and parenthood.
	We then teach all primary school boys, as well as girls, the SEALor social and emotional aspects of learningprogramme. This gives every child the intellectual equipment to develop effectively, which sadly all too many do not get at home because of the lack of parenting skills in their domestic situation. To complete the circle, in September we are taking this process to the next stage by starting to teach 11 to 16-year-olds life skills in every secondary school in Nottingham that volunteers for the programmeanticipating the Government's initiative to make personal, health and social education, or PHSE, compulsory in two years' time. This will enable boys as well as girls to understand how to parent, to sustain relationships and to build and maintain families. We are happy to teach young people mathematics, English and a foreign language, but somehow we resile from teaching them how to be decent people and good parents to the next generation of young people to the highest possible standards.

David Drew: In the early 1990s I took part in a review of this issue, and the one factor that we found to be symptomatic of teenage pregnancy was lack of self-esteem in both boys and girls. It is possible to foster self-esteem through education, and does my hon. Friend agree that we should build that aim into all our policies?

Graham Allen: We sum it up in Nottingham in slightly different words, but to exactly the same effectwe talk about building the social and emotional bedrock for young people. If young people have the ability to interact, to learn and to resolve arguments without violencethe basic things that most middle-class parents teach their childrenit is virtually impossible to fail in terms of educational attainment, aspiration to work and raising a decent family. That is why it is important that such things are built into provision from the earliest point, instead of chasing after the problem later, by which time it is all but intractable without the expenditure of massive amounts of money and person hours.
	In addition to building young people's social and emotional bedrock, in Nottingham we are working directly to address young potential fathers. We fund a specialist health development worker for young men and have commissioned research by Dr. Peter Gates at Nottingham university on how best to identify potential absentee fathers and communicate with them. That research builds on the work that we have done with young girls, and it will result in a hard-hitting DVD and appropriate sex education materials to accompany it.
	I know that the Minister will agree that more needs to be done nationally to target teenage boys, through the benefits system, and in enabling them to make mature decisions about parenthood, and encouraging them to delay sexual activity. Nottingham could be an example of how to tackle the problem in both the immediate and the long term. It is not only about swatting the mosquito, but draining the swamp. We need to build for the future through a long-term programme of investment.
	Any materials used need to be easy to follow, and not beyond the comprehension of teen parents who left school earlyor even of the average MP. The Family Planning Association does good work in this sphere, with community projects targeted at young men. It made getting the message across to boys the theme for its annual contraception week last year.
	The message may be getting through: according to NHS statistics, the number of men attending NHS contraception clinics leapt by 20 per cent. in 2006-07, and there was a huge 54 per cent. increase in those aged 15 and 16. These signs of improvement must be enhanced by further work to provide young men with the social and emotional basis for sensible decision making.
	I was pleased to see that in February the Ministers with responsibility for public health and for young people announced an extra 20.5 million to support young people and help them to access contraception. Do the Government actually know what that money has been spent on? Do the Government know the extent to which it is being used to track real boys as well as real girls? Otherwise, it could be business-as-usual syndrome instead of a sharp, systematic identification and face-to-face contact with those who need it before they even consider sexual activity. In other words, we should have outcomes with specific people rather than just allocating more money.
	That is not as daunting as it might sound. Even in Nottingham, only 417 teenagers had babies last year. That is a perfectly manageable number when it comes to getting to know those people, their siblings and their associates as part of defining a broader at-risk group with whom we can then work very directly with some serious pre-emptive education. We will not do that unless we identify where money is going and what it is being spent on and get some real outcomes noted and reported to the centre so that they can be properly tracked.
	Although improvements to the benefit system are an important step and the focus of tonight's debate, it must be remembered that under-16s or under-18s who are full-time students or who are getting income support or income-based jobseeker's allowance do not pay maintenance under the current rules. We need to find other ways to reach those fathers and to ensure that they are involved in their children's lives.
	I welcome another initiative of the Government's, which is the requirement in the Welfare Reform Bill that a father's name be recorded on the birth certificate. That might seem obvious to many people who read or listen to this debate, but it is not a current requirement. Four in 10 babies registered without a father are born to teenage mothers. This welcome change will not only make it easier to track down who owes maintenance, for example, but it will also enable the transmission of messages to the father to highlight the importance of that father's being in the child's life as that young person grows up.
	Let us not forget that two out of three teen fathers are resident at a different address from the mother. Rebuilding that family unit with every possible assistance and support is clearly something that would be beneficial to the child when they were growing up. Perhaps my hon. Friend the Minister could tell us whether that provision will also entail a corresponding requirement to inform the father that he is named. That would not only be a safeguard against being falsely named but, for those who are truly and properly named as fathers, it could be a channel of communication to help deliver them from the status of outsider in their own child's life. They can then undertake the responsibilities that fathering a child must entail.
	I say that with some feeling. In some senses, I feel that I have come full circle in talking about this issue. Around 1989-90, I led for my party on social security on the first Child Support Agency Bill. Few things separated the parties on that Bill, but one thing that was very apparent was that we were not listening to anyone outside. We were not listening to Families Need Fathers or to battered wives. We did not have proper pre-legislative scrutiny. The result was that we reinvented that Billyou can correct me if I am wrong, Mr. Deputy Speakeron at least five subsequent occasions. How many broken families, how much misery and how many suicides did that oversight cost us?
	We now have a chance to put the history right. We have created a new commission to oversee this area, which is not just about punitively chasing and tracking down teen fathers or any other fathers. It is about developing policy and bringing those young fathers back into the family in a literal sense so that we have a chance to rewrite some of the unfortunate history that there has been in this policy field.
	I look forward to the Minister's reply. I am not flattering her when I say that she has done a truly remarkable job in the short time that she has held this portfolio. Great progress has been made and I hope that she will confirm the Government's commitment to a balance between carrots and sticks, to much better cross-departmental working and, above all, to committing to find ways to intervene early, which is cheaper and more effective, rather than late, which is both expensive and less effective. If she does that, there will be many teen fathers who will be part of a family rather than apart from their family. Above all, many babies and children being born today in our country will be raised with a father and a mother, and will be much more able as both individuals and citizens of our society. They will be among the foremost to be grateful for a Government who take that opportunity and challenge.

Kitty Ussher: As is customary, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) on securing the debate. I also thank him for his kind words and know that he speaks with considerable expertiseas he has mentioned, he chairs the board of the teenage pregnancy taskforce in his constituency. Moreover, I know that he shares my strong personal interest in getting the policy right. He has made a clear contribution locally in Nottingham, and as he has mentioned, he recently met senior officials from CMEC, as well as officials from the Department for Work and Pensions. We very much welcome that engagement, so I thank him for it.
	As I am sure that my hon. Friend is aware, he raised several issues that cross a number of Departments and challenged us to be joined up in our response. He has mentioned policy areas that are the direct responsibility of the Department for Children, Schools and Families, the Department for Communities and Local Government, the Ministry of Justice, and my humble Department, the Department for Work and Pensions. I will attempt to give him a cross-departmental response, because he is absolutely right that we need to solve the issues by working together.
	I want to start with my hon. Friend's key insight: of course, all children have two parents, and over time, the widespread use of the phrase single parent or lone parent in the media has drawn attention away from the fact that there are almost always two parents around, as well as the child or children involved. My hon. Friend rightly reminds us that our policies need to encompass everyone in separated families. Often, parents, whatever their age, who do not live with their children have a genuine desire to be more involved. Our role in government is to remove any barriers to that across the gamut of Government policy.
	I welcome my hon. Friend's distinction between the separate issues of how we best support young people after they become parents, and how we best intervene so that they can come to a mature decision about when is the best time to have childrenthat is, before they become parents. There is also a fundamental challenge across both issues: how do we help teenage girls and boys to break out of the pattern of behaviours that they see all around themthe very behaviours that have often led to child poverty being handed down from generation to generation? How do we break that cycle? How do we change the presumptions that society sometimes unfortunately makes?
	I will address all the points that my hon. Friend made, starting with the issues that he raised about supporting fathers, particularly young fathers, into work, so that they can perhaps contribute from a more confident standpoint, and are, of course, more financially able to contribute. The cornerstone of our whole approach to welfare policy is a benefit and tax system that provides support for those who cannot work at the present time, but that provides every incentive for them to enter the world of work at the earliest possible opportunity. That might be full-time work, part-time work or preparing for work through training or education. In this debate, we have focused on young parents, but of course we want everybody in society to realise their potential.
	The particular point about young parents is that if people's ambitions become thwarted or dented, or are never realised, due to lack of confidence at a young age, it is much harder to recover a sense of drive. There is always a second or indeed a third chance, particularly under this Government, but it is important to try to get it right first time round. That has been a consistent theme of the Government, and the Welfare Reform Bill, which is being debated in the other place, builds on the foundations that we have put in place over the past decade.
	The issue is particularly important in the current economic climate. I know from my experience as a constituency MP how heartbreaking it is when a young person enters the job market for the first time and cannot find what they want because of the macro-economic situation, which is beyond their control, and then does not have the confidence to come back to it later. They may perhaps take a different path in life, often involving setting up home and having children. If the Government, through their welfare-to-work policy, are not able to give that person the chance that they need when they want it, all too often the opportunity does not arise again.
	All Jobcentre Plus advisers are trained to help people find out what they are entitled toto find their way through the benefits mazeand can guide people through filling in a claim form. If the young person is 16 or 17, someone will call them back within four hours to discuss the situation. If they are 18 or over, an adviser will contact them within 24 hours, once they have made their initial claim. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has made it quite clear that by the turn of the year young people between 18 and 24 who are verging on becoming long-term unemployed as a result of the recession will be guaranteed jobs or training precisely to try to avoid a whole generation of young people being abandoned on the scrapheap, as happened in previous recessions under previous Governments.
	My hon. Friend raised the issue of the couple penalty, as it is called in the jargon. Perhaps there is a perception that by separating, families can get more from the system. We are ever vigilant to make sure that that is not a real economic effect, and I have no evidence to assume that it is more or less relevant to younger parents. However, if my hon. Friend does have such evidence, we would like to keep it under close review. We want to allocate resources according to need, and not to create perverse incentives.
	My hon. Friend rightly raised the issue of complexity. The situation does remain complex, and the December 2008 White Paper on welfare reform argued that a system of benefits fit for the 21st century should be simple to understand, well targeted and empowering, and that is our motivation through the successive stages of welfare reform, which must provide clarity and certainty for people making the transition between benefits and work. The White Paper committed the Government to exploring whether, over the long term, a single benefit is the right approach to make things simpler. The desire to reduce complexity lies behind, for example, the review of housing benefit that I am leading and on which I hope to report soon. Regardless of people's age, complexity is something that we must do our best to reduce.
	My hon. Friend proposed a one-stop shop for young fathers. It is an interesting idea, but personally, I am not convinced at the moment. I think that it would be better if, in mainstream services, the entire government system can deal with young people's demands. I would be interested to hear of examples in which that is not the case, so that we can make sure that we correct them. However, I will bear his suggestion in mind.
	The Government recognise that families are more diverse than ever before, and the issue of teen families proves that very point. The role of mothers and fathers in modern families is changing, and public services and the workplace must reflect those changes not only in benefits policy but across all public services. My hon. Friend is quite right that the outcomes for children are better when their fathers are involved. Moving on to the territory of my hon. Friends in the Department for Children, Schools and Families, it is worth saying that guidance on supporting teenage pregnancies was published by the DCSF and the Department of Health in July 2007, setting out what local areas should have in place to improve outcomes for teenage parents, both mothers and fathers, and their children.
	Fathers' ability to become involved is, I agree with my hon. Friend, sometimes hindered by service providers who do not appreciate the role that they could, or do, play, particularly if they are not visible to the service provider, who consequently does not take their needs into account. If someone does not ask the question, Are you a father? when a young person comes into their sphere of influence, they might not realise the full extent of support that is required. We recommend that local services should take a much more proactive approach to identifying young fathers through the common assessment framework and targeted youth support arrangements. For example, young men who are not in education, employment or training should routinely be asked, as I have suggested, if they are a parent, so that we can build up a better picture of them and provide the support that they need as fathers. That includes the desire that we hope they will have to support their children and earn a wage sufficient to do so, regardless of whether they live with them.
	The Think Fathers campaign was launched at the end of 2008 to effect a change in attitudes and behaviour and to help deliver more father-friendly practice across the board, following the publication of research that showed that engagement and support for fathers from the DCSF and children's services was patchy. We agree that a more focused approach to the issue is needed, and we are in the process of trying to achieve that.
	My hon. Friend will be aware that the Welfare Reform Bill contains significant change on joint birth registration. The answer to his question whether an unmarried father's name can appear on the birth certificate without his knowledge is no. That is crucial to the way the system works. A mother would, by law, have to name the father if she knew who it was, or she would be committing perjury. The father would then be contacted and asked to confirm that. The father's name would then appear on the birth certificate. Yes, the birth certificate is only a piece of paper, but it is a legal piece of paper and it has huge ceremonial and cultural significance. We are clear that at the crucial moment when a father comes to terms with fatherhood and perhaps deep down wants to get involved, it is a little nudge in the right direction, rather than a barrier preventing him from doing so.
	One aim of the joint birth registration provision is that an unmarried father who registers his child's birth will acquire parental responsibility, whereas under the current system, if parents are not married to each other, a mother can prevent the father from registering, and he would need to apply for a court order. Also under the current system, an unmarried father may refuse to register, even if the mother wants him to do so. It would be illegal for him to refuse under the new system. I hope that that will be welcome.

Graham Allen: Moving away from the slightly punitive aspect that my hon. Friend has been describing, is that not a fantastic opportunity to communicate with fathers? If the father's name, and presumably his address, are known, it is open to the relevant agencies to inform him about parenting classes, and about how to use the right services to keep their family together, sustain relationships and so on. That moment is a great opportunity for early intervention that might bring a number of fathers back to the mother and child, help them to realise their responsibilities and equip them to do the job more effectively.

Kitty Ussher: We certainly need to find a way to make it easy to do that. There is an inherent tension between the role of registrars and wider social policy, because registrars are, by definition, very important clerksthey register. They do not have a wider social policy goal. I agree with what my hon. Friend is trying to achieve, but there may be other ways of doing that, which I shall come to.
	I shall deal next with the extra dimension added by CMEC, which my hon. Friend has mentioned. From the outset, the difference between the commission and the CSA, which forms part of it, is that it has a wider role, which is extremely ambitious but cuts to the core of what my hon. Friend wants to achieve, which is to change the culture of society. The commission's work in this area has not begun, but it has some exciting ideas for creating a society where parents recognise their responsibilities towards children and the responsibilities that come from sexual relationships as part of that, rather than that being an add-on when events force people down that route.
	The innovative work that my hon. Friend is doing in Nottingham will be watched carefully by staff at CMEC, as well as by officials in my Department, to see whether there are wider lessons that can be learned. My hon. Friend is ahead of the curve in many areas, which is extremely useful as policy develops.
	The commission's Options service is available to both parents to help them determine the best maintenance arrangement for their circumstances. The CSA's role is to alleviate child poverty by ensuring that money flows to children. That is and should be its primary role, but the people who contact it may be in need of other sorts of help. That can be a means of keeping families together and/or involving absent parents with the upbringing of their children, regardless of the state of the relationship between the two parents. The Options service can signpost parents to other services, such as mediation and third-sector support, which can include mentoring and so on. The challenge is to ensure that, when there is a clear need, the Options service points people in the right direction. It can help parents to come to arrangements that may include support in kind and the transfer of objects rather than money, and it can encourage people to understand what a private arrangement looks and feels like. That is crucial to a relationship between separated parents that works in the interests of the child, and there is potential in those services.

David Drew: The Minister will have heard my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) talk about contact centres, and I should like to pay due regard to those people who organise them. It is the most difficult job for all sorts of reasons: people do not necessarily go there willingly, and they are certainly not there to talk to their former partner in the best of manners. However, the people who run the centres are amazingly important to our whole system, and I hope that the Minister agrees that they are worthy of comment.

Kitty Ussher: Indeed. I welcome my hon. Friend's contribution and completely agree. Contact centres have an important role to play in the tapestry of policy in certain circumstances, and it is not easy to work there, so I pay tribute to the staff and, indeed, to everyone involved.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North raised the issue of lower socio-economic groups, to use his words, and how they respond to the options that the Options service presents. He made an extremely valid point about monitoring and, to ensure that people do not drop out of the system as the law changes, I have made it a top personal priority to monitor Options service usage and the number of people who go through formal or informal arrangements. He has put his finger on a crucial issue, but I should like to reassure him that we have no evidence of such activityand we do have as much evidence as it is possible to have. As time goes on and more data become available, however, monitoring will certainly be our top priority.
	My hon. Friend rightly pointed out that, from April 2010, child maintenance will be fully disregarded in the calculation of benefits. It will have a huge psychological impact on people's desire to contribute but a very real financial impact on the families concerned. The commission is also carrying out research into why some parents choose not to make maintenance payments and how such behaviour may be changed. Once we have the results, we can take the appropriate policy action. Of course, in circumstances where behaviour does not change and the non-resident parent is liable to pay maintenance, which is means-tested, the commission has an enhanced range of enforcement powers, including the powers in the Welfare Reform Bill.
	Cutting to a point that both my hon. Friends made, I should say that the commission is also involved in the development of the pilots that the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families announced in December 2008. They will test the impact of providing more accessible and better co-ordinated local services for separating and separated parents. It is a potentially exciting policy. The pilots will start later this year and include advice on child maintenance and child contact and residence as part of the same service, and advice on child care benefits and tax credits. They will enable us to see whether we can use holistic services along the lines of the Australian approach, which my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North mentioned, to provide a more effective service to support separated families. Indeed, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions visited Australia last week specifically to look at how such centres work in practice.
	It is worth touching on the question whether there should be a relationship between financial support and contact. I completely understand that some aggravation is often felt: there is no love lost between separating parents if someone pays maintenance but is not able to have contact. However, it is important to separate the two arrangements, and I do not think that people can pay for contact, which is perhaps what would follow. There is an important, softer point as well. If separated or separating parents of whatever age can come to a financial arrangement, which is often the hardest thing to negotiate, I see no reason why they should not take confidence from that and come to an arrangement about contact. We encourage people to start with the finances but not to see that as the end of the negotiation. That is one of the important reasons why people, even those on benefits, are able to opt out of compulsory CSA negotiation. If they are able and willing to come to their own private arrangements, the chances are that there will be a kernel of an opportunity for the parents to talk. That would help the children by helping an agreement on contact to be reached. If that fails, there is always the opportunity to go to court.
	I am aware that we have the luxury of being able to talk for several hours, but I will not detain the House for much longer. I just want to touch on the issue of supporting children prior to parenthood and how best to provide them with the life skills to make mature decisions about their futuresincluding when to have children and how to break out of negative behaviours that they see around them. I am sure that we all share concerns about England's high rates of teenage pregnancy compared with those of most other developed countries. That is why we launched the 10-year teenage pregnancy strategy in 1999, following a detailed report from the social exclusion unit.
	Since then, we have achieved a 10.7 per cent. fall in the conception rate among under-18s, and a 6.4 per cent. fall in that rate among under-16s, reversing a trend that had been going upwards. Within the overall reduction in teenage conceptions, teenage births have fallen by 23.3 per cent. Those falls are welcome, but we would not be having this debate if we did not recognise that the progress has not been fast enough.
	I understand that there are particularly challenging circumstances in Nottingham; that is why we welcome my hon. Friend's contribution and engagements. To accelerate progress, the Minister for Children, Young People and Families and my right hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South (Dawn Primarolo), at the Department of Health, recently announced additional support to help local areas reduce their birth rates further. My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North mentioned the 20.5 million extra that there has been to improve young people's access to effective contraception, and support for parents so that they can talk to their children about sex and relationships. Of course we need to know how that money is being spent, and I shall pass on my hon. Friend's questions to colleagues at the Department for Children, Schools and Families.
	I can exclusively reveal that the money is broken down into 10 million for local health services to ensure that contraception is available in the right places and at the right times. I am thinking especially of long-acting, reversible contraceptive measures, which science dictates will be more likely to be focused on girls; that does not mean, however, that the same principle will not apply to boys. Another 7 million goes towards a new media campaign on contraceptive choices to raise awareness of the different options. Department of Health Ministers have not yet decided whether there will be a particular focus on boys, although I hope that this debate will encourage them to do so. Furthermore, 1 million is directed towards the further education sector for on-site contraception. That sector is proving a particularly useful channel for making an impact on young people's views. There is also 2.5 million for the Healthy College programme. That follows the announcement last October that the Government intend to make personal, social and health education statutory in all schools, to ensure that young people have the knowledge and skills that they need to make safe and responsible choices.
	I have already alluded to the issue, but my hon. Friend posed the question whether teenage pregnancy campaigns are too girl-centric and do not focus enough on boys. We know that boys tend to have fewer sources of information on sex and relationship issues and that they talk to their parents about them less. That is why, if done appropriately, the information that comes through teaching at schools is so crucial for boys. Department for Children, Schools and Families Ministers have commissioned Brook to produce revised guidance on contraception and sexual health services for boys and young men; that will be ready in autumn this year.
	In many communities, including my own constituency, Brook provides a valuable and often credible service to boys and young men. We look forward to its advice. The whole issue of how sex education, including contraception, and child maintenance issues should be taught in schools is being considered as part of the Macdonald review. We will have an opportunity to discuss the issue in the months ahead.
	I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the offer of becoming myth-buster general; I will do my best. Much stigma needs to be overcome. Gingerbread, the lobby group for single parentsthose of all ages and genders, obviouslyprovides an excellent starting point. It does research among its own client group showing that single parents feel that their needs are not properly understood by society, particularly by the media. We in Government, and hon. Members on both sides of the House, have a leadership role in debunking some of the myths, and I encourage colleagues to do so.
	My hon. Friend raised several interesting points about housing, some of which we are considering as part of the review of how housing benefit rules treat separated families. I would be interested in having his views on that when we have launched our consultation.
	As for postersyes, I am happy to consider those if we feel that they can have an effect. The changes to child maintenance may be a peg to hang that on, so let us keep talking about it.
	I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving the House an opportunity to discuss such an important issue, and to my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew), who is no longer in his place, for his engagement. I hope that my hon. Friend has been reassured that I and my ministerial colleagues across Whitehall take this issue very seriously. I am not alone in commending his deep personal commitment to changing the lives of teenage parents in his constituency. I hope that from the lessons that he is learning locally we can develop national solutions that will affect the lives of even more of them.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 House adjourned.